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" There is no death : what seems so is transition.^ 

Longfellow. 

" ' Tis better to have loved and lost 

Than never to have loved at all. 11 

Tennyson. 

1 ' Words weaker than your grief would make grief more -, 
Yet something I did wish to say." 

Tennyson. 



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Light on the Cloud; 



::.. 



HINTS OF COMFORT FOR HOURS OF SORROW. 



Ml J SAVAGE, 

AUTHOR OF :- :-7:.-.NTTY THE SCIENCE OF MANHOOD.* 







Boston : 

LOCKWOOD, BROOKS. & COMPANY. 

'■'•"ashington Street. 
1876. 



HJ- 



4M 



3 



V** 







4 



.S* 




YRIGHT, 1876, 
BY LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & CO. 



Franklin Press : Rand, Avery, & Co., 
Boston. 



TO THOSE WHO SORROW. 



PREFACE. 



IV TEARLY all the matter of this little volume has 
been in print before. Some of it has been copied 
many times, and circulated widely. Parts of it have 
been called for from California and the Mississippi to 
Maine. From many sources the advice has come, to 
put it into permanent form. It is now sent forth with 
no pretension, and making no claims. It indeed 
aspires to the sacred work of comfort, but only by 
hints and whispers that would " let Grief be her own 
mistress still." The author despises perfunctory or 
official sympathy. He would simply sit down by the 
side of those whom the cloud overhangs, and by a 
pressure of the hand, or a word from the heart, help 
them believe in the light that is above the clouds and 

7 



Preface, 

stronger than they. He would not claim to prove all 
he has suggested. One may hope the sweetest and 
best things, if only his hope be rational. 

As for the verses, if any one thinks they are not 
worthy to be called poetry, let them be named what- 
ever they may. 

The "parts " of the book can be read continuously ; 
or the paragraphs may be taken at random, and with- 
out regard to order. 

The book contains nothing sectarian. 
8 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

LIGHT ON THE CLOUD 17 

RESIGNATION 19 



PART FIRST. 

THE MYSTERY OF AFFLICTION. 

I. Why do we suffer? 21 

II. Present Ignorance 23 

III. The End of Life 25 

IV. Lost Blessings not all lost 28 

V. How Finish comes 29 

VI. But why me? 31 

VII. No Life incomplete 33 

VIII. Two Sides of Dying 35 

IX. These Hints only a Staff 37 

MYSTERY 3S 

THE PESCADERO PEBBLES 40 

9 



Contents. 



PART SECOND. 

THE MINISTRY OF AFFLICTION. 

PAGE 

I. Good out of Evil 42 

II. Character born of Sorrow 43 

III. Affliction may help or harm 45 

IV. Trouble develops Sympathy 46 

V. Tears cleanse the Vision 48 

VI. The true End of Life 49 

VII. Life a School 50 

VIII. A Parable of Growth 51 

IX. Affliction lifts up the Life 52 

X. Affliction teaches a Noble Discontent. 54 

XI. Affliction tests and gives Assurance . 56 

HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP .... 59 

PEACE 61 

PART THIRD. 

THE DIVINE ALCHEMY. 



I. Can Hard Things be "for Good"? 

II. Is a Broken Home " for Good " ? . 

III. Is Loss of Property " for Good " ? 

IV. Is Lost Health "for Good"? . 
V. The Problem a dark one. . . 

VI. God no God, if not good . . . 

VII. What is our "Good"?. . . . 

VIII. The Condition of the Promise 

IX. Who are " them that love God " ? 



64 
66 

67 
63 
69 
70 
72 
73 



Co7itents. 



PAGE 

X. Like Causes produce Opposite Results . 74 

XL Evil may "work for Good" ..... 75 

XII. Apples get sweet only when ripe . . . 76 

LIFE IN DEATH 78 

THE DEAD ACORN 80 



PART FOURTH. 

DEATH A BLESSING. 

I. Hard to believe in Death 82 

II. Different Thoughts of Death . ... 83 

III. Death is Nothing 85 

. IV. Death not a Curse 86 

V. Deati: not the Result of Sin 86 

VI. Death the Condition of Life 88 

VII. Death merely a Change of Residence . 89 

VIII. Endless Earth-Life a Curse 91 

IX. Death the Condition of Higher Life . 95 

X. Death the Way to Permanent Unions . 97 

GOING TO SLEEP 101 

LIFE FROM DEATH 103 

PART FIFTH. 

WILLING TO LIVE. 

I. Willing to die, or to live ? 104 

II. Easy to be willing to die 104 

III. Willing to live on Condition .... 106 



Contents. 



PAGE 

IV. Hard Things of Life 108 

V. Mystery makes it hard 109 

VI. Unsatisfied Loves in 

VII. Life's Burdens 113 

VIII. Losses make us unreconciled to Life. . 115 

IX. Life is worth living 116 

X. Trust reconciles to Life 116 

XI. Content with each* Step as a Step . .121 

XII. Success consistent with Loss 122 

AT TWILIGHT TIME 125 

MEMORY 127 



PART SIXTH. 



HAPPINESS. 



I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XL 

XII. 



The Pleasant Way 

Religion has been Gloomy .... 
Man naturally seeks Happiness . . 
An Unhappy Universe a Failure . 
Pleasure is Life, and Pain is Death 
Happiness essential to Best Work . 
This the Root of Civilization . . 
Our Right to Happiness limited. . 
Health a Condition of Happiness . 
Appreciation of Common Things . "! 
N'oble Happiness in Noble Things . 
The Noble Things endure .... 



GOD MADE OUR LIVES TO BE A SONG 
HOPE * 



129 
130 
132 
132 

134 
136 

138 

J39 
142 

H3 
146 
148 

150 
152 



Conte?its. 



PART SEVENTH. 

HEAVEN. 

PAGE 

I. Where is Heaven ? 1 54 

II. Most Reasonable Thought of Heaven . 159 

III. This Idea gives Room 160 

IV. Analogy supports it 161 

V. The Material Universe still ours . . . 162 

VI. What is Heaven? 162 

VII. Heaven is Harmony 163 

VIII. Heaven is Satisfaction 164 

IX. Heaven is Expansion 166 

X. Heaven is Progress 168 

XI. Terms of Admission 170 

PROGRESS 172 

A. R. C 174 

13 



LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 



LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. 

THERE'S never an always cloudless sky, 
There's never a vale so fair, 
But over it sometimes shadows lie 
In a chill and songless air. 

But never a cloud o'erhung the day, 

And flung its shadows down, 
But on its heaven-side gleamed some ray, 

Forming a sunshine crown. 

It is dark on only the downward side : 

Though rage the tempest loud, 
And scatter its terrors far and wide, 

There's light upon the cloud. 

And often, when it traileth low, 

Shutting the landscape out, 
And only the chilly east-winds blow 

From the foggy seas of doubt, 



Light on the Cloud. 



There'll come a time, near the setting sun, 
When the joys of life seem few: 

A rift will break in the evening dun, 
And the golden light stream through. 

And the soul a glorious bridge will make 

Out of the golden bars, 
And all its priceless treasures take 

Where shine the eternal stars. 

18 



RESIGNATION. 

MY Father, thou art strong. Nought can withstand 
The might of thy right arm ; and yet I bleed, 
Blown on and broken like a weakly reed, 
Whilst thou couldst stay the tempest with thy hand. 

My Father, thou art wise. The universe 

Thou readest simply, as I read a book ; 
Thou knowest what is best, and yet dost look 

Unmoved on what my sad heart calls a curse. 

My Father, thou art loving. My full heart, 

That breaks with love, is but a little urn, 
Filled at thine infinite fountain ; yet I yearn 

O'er sundered lives thou sufferest torn apart. 

'Tis mystery all, O Father ! Love and might 

And wisdom in their triple strength seem vain : 
The blessed God looks down upon my pain, 

While I grope onward through the stumbling night. 

19 



Light on the Cloud. 



But that he does not help shall be my hope ; 

He might prevent ; he's wise, and he is love: 
Then there is meaning in it, and 'twill prove, 

That, where I may not see, 'tis best to grope. 

We lead our children by dark ways. We tell 

Them they must trust us, though they cannot 

see. 
For never boy knew manhood, or could be 

Persuaded that the tasks of youth were well. 

And yet from lessons learned, and tasks well done, 
Is born the noble life and happy days : 
No runner ever yet was crowned with bays, 

Who faltered when the strife had just begun. 

Then learn we resignation and firm trust : 

Some line of purpose still our life runs through. 
God's days are many, and our sorrows few ; 

And joy shall blossom yet from out the dust. 



PART FIRST. 



THE MYSTERY OF AFFLICTION. 
I.— WHY DO WE SUFFER? 

JOB is sitting in the ashes. Property is gone. Sons 
are gone. Daughters are gone. Friends come not 
nigh. The persons he has saved from injustice, and 
helped in their poverty, have deserted his hour of 
calamity. But, though children come not back, per- 
haps he may retrieve his earthly fortunes by skill and 
management in his affairs. No, all hope of this is cut 
off; for he is cursed with a disease that precludes 
labor, or dealing with his fellow-men. Now, if ever, 
is the time to doubt if there is any God ; or, if there 
is, that he is just ; much more, that he is merciful and 
kind. Job's wife is decidedly of this opinion ; for she 
urges him to give up his nonsensical trust, to " curse 
God, and die." And surely she had the logic on her 
side, so far as men could see. That didn't look like 
the way a father would treat a child. And certainly 
it seemed a little unreasonable, in the face of such 



Light 011 the Cloud. 



disaster, to look up, and say, "Our Father who is 
in heaven." 

But Job saw another side of the case. " God has 
given me good. I trusted him then ; for he proved 
himself kind. Now shall I renounce him because I 
cannot understand how my present condition can be 
consistent with that goodness ? No ! I'll wait and 
see." That is the attitude of faith, — just the same 
kind of faith you exercise in the character of a tried 
friend. Something comes up that seems to impugn 
his trustworthiness ; and you say, " No ! That don't 
seem like him. There maybe some explanation. I'll 
wait and see. I won't believe it of him till I have to." 

Here stood Job. Here let us stand. His words — 
" Have I received good, and shall I not receive evil?" 
— do not explain a thing. It is all dark as ever. It is 
only a voice in the dark that says, " I cannot see the 
way of God ; but I will not call it wrong until I can 
see." 

This life is walked under a cloud. We came out of 
shadow ; we go into shadow. What it all means no 
mortal has yet discovered. But we hear a voice out 
of the cloud, saying to us, " What I do, thou know- 
est not now ; but thou shalt know hereafter." For 
the sunrise of the hereafter, then, we must wait ; but, 
meantime, there come to us some few faint gleams 
of dawn. Their dim twilight is just enough to help 
our faith, and to make us look more hopefully for the 
morning. 



The Mystery of Affliction. 



To the question, " Why do we suffer ? " several 
answers the world has offered. The first one is that 
of Job's friends ; and it has been echoed ever since : 
" You are worse than others, and are being punished." 
Christ, both by his words and by his cross, on which 
he the Perfect groaned and died, has authorized us to 
deny this. Not that God does not punish for sin, but 
only that the fact that we suffer is no proof of our sin. 
Another answer is a denial of Providence, and a ref- 
erence of all things to unyielding law. This, pushed 
too far, takes away our God. God is a Providence ; 
and law is wielded by love. 

But the question comes back, " Why suffer, then, 
if the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be God ? He 
is wise, and knows what is best. He is strong, and 
can do his will. He is loving, and wishes us no harm. 
Why, then, pain and loss and weeping ? " Just this 
is the cloud. It does obscure the sun : let us not 
deny this. But it has rifts and chinks in it, and the 
rays drop through. At these rays let us look, and see 
what hints they can give us of the light that is above. 

II. — PRESENT IGNORANCE. 

It may be necessary in the nature of things, and 
needful for our highest culture, that we should not 
know now. 

Present ignorance of many of life's problems is 
natural and necessary. Our earthly existence is a 
state of tutelage and training. All things can be 

23 



Light on the Cloud, 



understood only by the Infinite. Every step of prog- 
ress is simply the solution of a new problem. Like 
the schoolboy's advance from simple addition to cube 
root, it is the mastery of a new principle, the working- 
out of one more difficulty. 

God does not make us walk in darkness for the 
mere purpose of perplexing us, or to assert his sove- 
reign right to do as he pleases with us. Many of 
these things we have not yet grown to, and cannot 
comprehend. Why it is better for a boy to be put to 
a hard trade, or set to learning the dry formulas of 
grammar, rather than to be permitted to play through 
all the long days in the sunshine, is a question that I 
presume has never yet been made clear to the boyish 
mind. And it is not parental tyranny nor wilfulness 
that keeps it a mystery. The boy cannot understand 
it ; for he cannot comprehend the relation of the trade 
or the grammar to the successes or failures of a life 
that lies all untried and unknown before him. Pres- 
ent ignorance is needful to the development in us of 
some of the highest graces of character. 

If a child should say about father or mother, " I'll 
believe in them just so far as I can keep my eye on 
facts, and no farther," you would say, " Either those 
are very unworthy parents, or that is a very unworthy 
child." If parents are not worth trusting in the dark, 
they are not worth having any way. This filial trust 
is one of the loveliest traits of character. 

And it is none the less lovely when brought into the 
24 



The Mystery of Affliction. 



sphere of religion, and exercised towards God. If 
we have not a God worthy of trusting in the dark, we 
have not one worth keeping. If we have, then let us 
honor him. as did Paul and Silas, who sent up songs 
winged with light, and warbling toward heaven, out of 
stocks, and a dungeon in the dark. 

As the arm stows strong onlv bv work, as the mem- 
ory increases only when made to carry weights, as the 
eye can see only in the light, so faith has a chance 
to develop only in darkness and trial. There is no 
room for faith in the daylight. Anybody can trust, 
then. Do not even the atheists so ? But he who, on 
the darkness of the tempest-tossed waters, can trust 
Him who stilleth the storm, he, and he only, can claim 
to -walk by faith." 

III. — THE END OF LIFE. 

Not what we can get or enjoy, but moral culture is 
the true end of life. 

Men ask, What have you got? what do you know? 
what can you do ? God asks, What are you ? On 
the answer to that question hangs our destiny. Then 
all things, all incidents, all gettings, all losses of this 
life, should be measured by their outcome, the resul- 
tant effect on our character. A possession is good, 
if it makes us generous, if, in the use of it, we develop 
all those right faculties that pertain to its handling. 
But if not, woe to the day on which the windfall came. 
Whether it shall prove to~ us a godsend or a curse 



Light on the Cloud. 



depends entirely upon our use of it. A loss may be 
a good, if, through its means, we develop those graces 
that come from the patient endurance of life's hard 
and heavy things. 

In either case, we are not to estimate them by what 
they are in themselves. This is but a superficial and, 
therefore, a false view to take. What they make of 
us is what determines their value. One of the first 
times I ever preached without notes, a friend said to 
me, " One disadvantage is, that you haven't got the 
sermon, now it is preached." " Yes," I said ; " but 
I've got the practice of going without it." 

A botanist makes a fine collection of leaves and 
flowers and grasses. When done, the fire takes it. 
But the best part, the drill and practice and knowl- 
edge acquired in making the collection, — these are 
left; and they are worth more than a dozen collections. 
The practice and study of collecting makes one a bota- 
nist ; but one might own the collection forever, and 
know nothing about it. 

A painter, by long years of work, becomes skilled in 
eye and finger and judgment and imagination. At 
the age of fifty he sells all his pictures to some one 
rich enough to buy them. He has left only eye and 
finger, and judgment and imagination, and the skill of 
all these ; but these are as much superior to one of 
his pictures as God is to the earth he has made. He 
is an artist ; but the man who fills his home with his 
paintings may be only a clown. What he becomes in 
26 



The Mystery of Affliction. 



his work is worth more than all he produces, or what 
he gets paid for it. You can buy pictures ; but you 
cannot buy genius and skill. 

Let us apply this principle to life. You have a 
home, husband, wife, children, property. These are 
partly for themselves, but in a sense quite as important 
they are for the sake of what their effect may be on us 
in our training. That is, this life is not wholly an end 
in itself : it has reference to a future ; and one of the 
most important elements in its value is its power to 
fit us for that future. Now, in the companionship, 
the joys and trials of this home, you have been devel- 
oping in love and patience and unselfishness and 
care and helpfulness. By and by the home is broken; 
but if you be grown thus godlike through the minis- 
tries of home, you have gained something worth more 
than the temporal conditions, something fitting you 
for the eternal home. The ear is worth more than a 
song, the sense of smell is worth more than a flower, 
the eye is worth more than a landscape, and so love is 
worth more than any one thing or person loved ; and 
particularly does this appear when we reflect, that, 
through the loss of the objects of our love, we are 
being trained into fitness to have and hold them for- 
ever. 

" God gives us love ; something to love 
He lends us ; but when love has grown 
To ripeness, that on which it throve 
Falls off, and love is left alone." 
27 



Light on the Cloud. 



IV. —LOST BLESSINGS NOT ALL LOST. 

And then, again, the life and joy of the past were 
no less blessings in their time because they are now 
taken away. Yesterday was just as fair and bright and 
beautiful a day of sunshine for. all of the fact that it 
fell off, at last, into the darkness of night. 

A husband has left the household, and the home 
seems broken and desolate. But you are glad that he 
once was yours. All those years of sunny joy and 
blessedness were real, and none the less so that they 
are ceased. The loss was only God taking to himself 
again what was always his, and what he lent to you. 
When you mourn, " The Lord hath taken away," 
do not forget the first part of the verse, " The Lord 
gave ; " and, above all, do not forget the close, " Bless- 
ed be the name of the Lord." 

A child is taken. It made the house bright and 
cheery, like a gleam of sunshine. It is gone, and it is 
dark. But do not forget that the sunshine was a posi- 
tive blessing while it remained, and that darkness is 
only sunshine's absence.. You would not have it true 
that you never had and loved the child ; then the 
life of the child, even with the loss at the end, was 
something to be grateful for. Add up all the sorrow, 
and subtract from the total gift, and there is a large 
remainder of clear blessing. On the whole, God's 
dealing has been goodness. Try and thank him, then, 

23 



TJie Mystery of Affliction. 



though with lips that tremble : and try to look up, 
though through eyes that are mist}*. 

I had two brothers. They grew to be noble Chris- 
tian men, then struggled with disease, lay down, and 
died. As their eyes closed in sleep, many a hope and 
plan of life faded out. many a bright outlook was 
darkened, many a castled scheme tumbled in ruin. 
But because they died am I sorry I had those bro- 
thers ? Was God, on the whole, good to me. or 
unkind, in giving them, and then taking them away ? 
" Good.*' say I, — ;, a thousand times good." Sony? 
Nay, their memory and influence on me I count 
among my chief est treasures. And then, though dead, 
they are mine still. I am richer by two brothers in 
heaven. 

Will you all who have suffered, then, not say with 
me, •• 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to 
have loved at all" ? 

V.— HOW FINISH COMES. 

Not long ago, I visited the celebrated tl Pebble 
Beach" at Pescadero. on the California coast. The 
long line of white surf comes up with its everlasting 
roar, and rattles and thunders among the stones on the 
shore. They are caught in the arms of the pitiless 
waves, and tossed and rolled, and rubbed together, and 
ground against the sharp-grained cliffs. Day and night 
forever the ceaseless attrition goes on: never any rest. 
And the result ? Tourists from all the world flock 

29 



Light on the Cloud. 



thither to gather the round and beautiful stones. They 
are laid up in cabinets : they ornament the what-not 
and the parlor mantle. 

But go yonder, around the point of the cliff that 
breaks off the force of the sea ; and up in that quiet 
cove, sheltered from the storms, and lying ever in the 
sun, you shall find abundance of pebbles that have 
never been picked over by the traveller. Why are 
these left all the years through unsought ? For the 
simple reason that they have escaped all the turmoil 
and attrition of the waves, and the quiet and peace 
have left them as they found them, rough and angu- 
lar, and devoid of beauty. Polish comes through 
trouble. 

All the difference there is between what looks like 
a worthless stone and a gem is in the cutting and 
grinding. All the difference between bullion and coin 
stamped with the king's face is in the smelting and 
the minting. All the difference between a wilderness 
and a garden is wrought by weeding and pruning. 
All the difference between a block of marble and a 
statue is produced by the mallet and the chisel. 

This principle in nature and art is no less control- 
ling in human life. The best and truest and most 
sympathetic men and women are the ones who have 
denied themselves, and have suffered. If I wished to 
go to a man for help, I'd seek out one who had met 
loss and trial. If I wished to find a woman to employ 
in some work of mercy or salvation, I'd search for one 
30 



\4 

The Mystery of Affliction. 



who had felt the cold wrench of pain at her heart, and 
had learned the lesson of weeping. 

God has for us up yonder, by and by, I know not 
what noble ministries and what exalted places of 
beauty and of power. Since he knows what niche we 
are to fill, trust him to shape us to it. Since he knows 
what work we are to do, trust him to drill us to the 
proper preparation. 

VI. — BUT WHY ME? 

Once more : but why me ? Why must I surfer so 
much, while others escape? My neighbor walks 
blithely along a pleasant road where the sun shines, 
and the birds sing ; and he seems never to be bowed 
beneath such weights as I carry. My way is bordered 
with weeping- willows ; and the only song is the whip- 
poorwilPs complaint. 

The answer may be, Partly it is not true, and partly 
it may be for a good reason that I will soon speak of. 
But, first, it is not so true as you think. You do not 
suffer so much more than others. All suffering and 
misfortune come not by death or the loss of property. 
These are even the smallest part of the burden the sad 
earth bears. When my brother died, I could look just 
a little down the street to one whose brother was not 
dead, who was still more afflicted than I. I would 
rather my brother were dead than that he should live 
as do the brothers of some. There are a good many 
things in this world harder to bear than the loss of 

31 



Light on the Cloud, 



friends. Many a secret sorrow of the heart, many a 
wrong, many an unknown sin, gnaws on the soul in 
private like a canker ; and could they only be ex- 
changed for a grave, the victims would thank God for 
it as a mercy. If, then, you have only to bear the 
memory of some noble loss, bless God with a full 
heart that it is not something worse ; for there be 
things beside which these are almost gladness. 

And then, if there be these differences, — which is 
not all denied, — I can think of one good reason which 
may be in the mind of God. 

Not all of us are destined for the same positions, or 
the same ministries, or the same joys, in the life to 
come ; and so it follows naturally that we ought not 
to have the same training. Here are two boys : one is 
to be a machinist, the other a lawyer ; would you ex- 
pect that the two should pass through the same pre- 
paratory training ? What is essential to one would be 
a hinderance and a waste of time to the other. And, 
further, the higher the position in life for which a 
boy is destined, the severer the mental training, and 
harder the drill of preparation ; so that he who has 
the hardest lot of study and discipline may, in the 
absence of any other proof, take that alone as indi- 
cating the fact that he is going higher ; and so the 
curse becomes a blessing. 

Why are you, then, called to suffer more than others ? 
Perhaps, if you take it rightly, because he has for 
you some nobler work or some higher place designed. 
32 



The Mystery of Affliction. 



VII. — NO LIFE INCOMPLETE. 

A life is not necessarily cut off before its time, 
because it seems so to us. A man dies at his noon, 
just in the midst of strength and usefulness, just when 
prepared, as it seems to us, to do good and great work 
for the world. He is building a church ; he is starting 
some great plan for the poor or the ignorant ; he is on 
the eve of a great invention ; he is a missionary just 
beginning to master his field. 

Men exclaim, " O the loss ! " But why ? Can no- 
body else build churches, or help the poor, or go on 
missions ? And has God nothing for people to do 
in the other life ? and is he so poor a general, that he 
does not know where to station his own officers and 
men? 

Martin Luther was wiser. When they tried to keep 
him from going to Worms by saying how necessary 
his life was to the cause, he said, " God can take care 
of his cause without me." Faithfulness in hours of 
duty and danger is of more value to God's cause than 
life. 

When my brother died just on the eve of gradua- 
tion, the neighbors said his college-course was lost. 
If this life's training is not worth any thing in heaven, 
they were right. But not so I view it I take it God 
has work for us by and by, and that earth's drill is 
fitting us to do it nobly. We graduate from earth into 
fitness for heaven. 

33 



Light on the Cloud. 



And then, when children die, people talk of a life 
unfinished, of buds broken off before their bloom. 
But how do we know that it was not the bud God 
wanted ? We never gather a bouquet but we think 
the buds the finest part. A bud is just as perfect as a 
flower, only it is not a flower. But shall not God be 
permitted to have buds in his bouquet, whose fra- 
grance is to perfume the altar in the temple above ? 

An acorn is just as finished as an oak. A chapel 
may be as nice a work of art, just as complete, as the 
grand magnificence of St. Peter's. A cherub is as 
perfect as an archangel. 

What mother thinks the crowing babe, or the laugh- 
ing boy of three, any less perfect or beautiful than 
grown-up men and women? Is there not about them, 
rather, a grace that is peculiarly their own ? And how 
dark our life would be without them ! And shall God 
have no babes, no children, in his beautiful house on 
high? Must all wait till they be gray, and then go 
tottering over the threshold of that upper home ? Or 
shall not, rather, the glad, gleesome children, with flow- 
ing hair, and merry, laughing eyes, go smiling through 
the doorways to meet " their angels " who " do always 
behold the face of their Father in heaven " ? Cannot 
God be as kind to them as we can, and watch them as 
tenderly ? 

34 



The Mystery of Affliction. 



VIII. — TWO SIDES OF DYING. 

And then there are two sides of dying, — the earth 
side and the heaven side. 

Here the hushed lips that shall never speak again, 
there the first burst of a song that shall never cease ; 
here the quiet of feet that have ceased their walking, 
there the starting-out upon immortal pathways ; here 
the unclasping of hands and the tears of farewells, 
there the greetings and gratulations and fresh-linked 
unions, and the lighting-up of recognitions that play 
over deathless features. 

The stars that go out when the morning begins to 
dawn do not sink into night : they only cease to shine 
on us, and begin to shine on some one else ; and 
what is to us the evening star is the herald of dawn to 
some other eyes. 

I sometimes question whether we may not be selfish 
in our grief. Let us look at a case. 

As often happens in our day, a family becomes 
divided ; a part of it staying in Germany or England, 
and a part of it having come over here. Now, on 
some day appointed, an emigrant ship sets sail for 
America. Notice the two ends of the voyage. On 
the European side, the broken remnant of the house- 
hold that is left behind gathers on the pier. They 
have shaken hands ; they have kissed good-by ; they 
have said the last words ; the tears fall down, and the 
throat chokes up, and the heart is heavy as lead while 

35 



Light on the Cloud. 



the ship swings off, and gradually lessens to a speck 
on the horizon. But on the American side there is 
glad expectation and impatient waiting. As the vessel 
heaves in sight, there is a shout ; and it hardly touches 
the wharf before the expectant ones are over the side, 
clasping in long-waiting arms the glad welcome of 
blessed re-union. What say you ? Ought not those 
left behind to subtract from the gross amount of their 
sorrow something of the gladness of those who in the 
new country greet their arrival ? 

I know a family divided : half is on earth, and half 
in heaven. The white-sailed boat, whose oarsman 
none can see, pushes off for another voyage. A fair- 
haired boy is passenger now. Cruel and hard it 
seems. Could not the children stay ? Why is sorrow 
added to sorrow ? The home was shadowed before : 
why this additional gloom ? So strange and mysteri- 
ous are the ways of God. This is the earth-side view. 
But on the other shore the father stands waiting for 
the time to go by when the rest shall be gathered into 
the new home. And perhaps he says, " There are 
two : cannot she spare me one ? " And while there is 
weeping here, there is the joy of meeting again up there. 
The boat shall hardly scrape its keel on the golden 
marge of the immortal land, when the boy shall leap 
out in his undying beauty into the arms of his father. 

O this earth-side is only a small part of life ! Let 
us offset the events and happenings of this by what 
these earthly things mean in the spiritual country. 
3^ 



The Mystery of Affliction. 



IX. — THESE HINTS ONLY A STAFF. 

And now, my friends, I have offered you my 
thoughts for your comfort. They will not, perhaps, 
take away your weakness ; but they may help sustain 
you in it. They will not drive off all the dark ; but 
they are glints of lights in the dark that may make 
your night more tolerable, or show you where to place 
your feet in the next steps of the journey. They only 
hint at the fact, that we must still take on faith, that 
God has always a good and loving reason in what 
he does. Death, a sad fact, still remains. It is still 
mysterious, and we see not. But the word of promise 
still echoes, " What thou knowest not now thou shalt 
know hereafter." Staying ourselves on this as on a 
staff, let us walk onward toward the sunrise. 

37 



MYSTERY. 

OWhy are darkness and thick cloud 
Wrapped close forever round the throne cf God? 
Why is our pathway still in mystery trod ? 
None answers, though we call aloud. 

The seedlet of the rose, 

While still beneath the ground, 

Think you it ever knows 

The mystery profound 
Of its own power of birth and bloom, 
Until it springs above its tomb ? 

The caterpillar crawls 

Its mean life in the dust, 

Or hangs upon the walls 

A dead aurelian crust ; 
Think you the larva ever knew 
Its gold- winged flight before it flew ? 

33 



Mystery. 

When from the port of Spain 
Columbus sailed away, 
And down the sinking main 
Moved toward the setting day, 
Could any words have made him see 
The new worlds that were yet to be ? 

The boy with laugh and play 

Fills out his little plan, 

Still lisping, day by day, 

Of how he'll be a man ; 
But can you to his childish brain 
Make aught of coming manhood plain ? 

Let heaven be just above us, 

Let God be e'er so nigh, 

Yet howsoe'er he love us, 

And howe'er much we cry, 
There is no speech that can make clear 
The thing " that doth not yet appear." 

'Tis not that God loves mystery. 

The things beyond us we can never know 
Until up to their lofty height we grow, 

And finite grasps infinity. 
1876. 39 



THE PESCADERO PEBBLES. 

WHERE slopes the beach to the setting sun, 
On the Pescadero shore, 
For ever and ever the restless surf 
Rolls up with its sullen roar. 

And grasping the pebbles in white hands, 

And chafing them together, 
And grinding them against the cliffs 

In stormy and sunny weather, 

It gives them never any rest : 

All day, all night, the pain 
Of their long agony sobs on, 

Sinks, and then swells again. 

And tourists come from every clime 

To search with eager care 
For those whose rest has been the least ; 

For such have grown most fair. 



The Pescadero Pebbles. 



But yonder, round a point of rock, 

In a quiet, sheltered cove, 
Where storm ne'er breaks, and sea ne'er comes, 

The tourists never rove. 

The pebbles lie 'neath the sunny sky 

Quiet forevermore : 
In dreams of everlasting peace 

They sleep upon the shore. 

But ugly, and rough, and jagged still 
Are they left by the passing years ; 

For they miss the beat of angry storms, 
And the surf that drips in tears. 

The hard turmoil of the pitiless sea 
Turns the pebble to beauteous gem. 

They who escape the agony 
Miss also the diadem. 
1875. < x 



PART SECOND. 



THE MINISTRY OF AFFLICTION. 
I. — GOOD OUT OF EVIL. 

EVERY step of human experience is a marvel ; 
every phase of nature about us, a wonder. Beauty 
from ugliness, good out of evil, everywhere. The rose 
sucks its life from some festering death beneath the 
sod. The white pond-lily climbs up out of the muddy 
waters, and lifts its pure petals above slime and cor- 
ruption. The fleece-cloud of the upper heaven is the 
evaporation of stagnant pools and miasmatic swamps. 
And in the human sphere, the most beautiful lives 
are the outcome of disappointment, anguish, and tears. 
Then may we not say, " We glory in tribulations ; 
knowing that tribulation worketh patience ; and pa- 
tience, experience ; and experience, hope ; and hope " 
frees from shame and disappointment ? The roses 
of life, as well as of the garden, the sweet-scented 
flowers of character, whose savor is precious incense 
before God, — these, though they climb up to such a 
height as to overrun the jasper walls, and bloom fairest 



The Ministry of Affliction. 



among the plants in the garden of God. do yet start 
from the root of some death or loss, and grow strong 
as they are shaken by the sharp winds of sorrow. 

The old Hebrew poem tells us that it was Satan 
who hurled down upon Job the thick-falling storm of 
his troubles ; but as ever falls out with malice, he 
was fooled for his pains. He was doing the sufferer 
the greatest favor of his life. For what was the end? 
It lifted him out of his uncertainty and weakness, and 
made him a strong, firm-principled man. It taught 
him the meaning of life. It was the means of God's 
revealing himself, and setting in clearer light the 
relations of earth and heaven. Blessed Job while 
sitting in ashes ! How often is it that sackcloth and 
dust are found at the gateway of moral advancement, 
and even on the threshold of heaven ! 

IT. -CHARACTER BORN OF SORROW. 

The elevating and perfecting of character come 
largely through sorrow. This is the <; mystery of the 
cross/' All progress is by crucifixion. Experiences 
sad and dark, and seemingly cruel, press upon us on 
even- hand. The past is tear-worn and furrowed, and 
the future glooms with shapes of trial. Like Paul, we 
'•'know not what shall befall us there."' Only the Holy 
Spirit witnessed to him, and experience witnesses to 
us, that ,; afflictions abide in us.*' I murmured at this, 
until I saw the crosses and stakes and racks and 
scaffolds of all ages, and the white feet of those who 

43 



Light on the Cloud. 



made these the stairways up which they climbed to 
light, to truth, to Saviourhood and God. Light breaks 
when I see Jesus, scarred with whipping, thorn- 
crowned, staggering up Calvary beneath his cross, 
and hear those old words of the spirit, "It became 
him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all 
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the 
captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." 
I falter sometimes when I try to say, " It is good 
for me that I have been afflicted." But I can now and 
then catch a glimpse of the truth of it, when the light 
of some suffering and conquering hero breaks through 
the blinding mist of my tears. I can sometimes see 
the grandeur of the truth so clearly, that, looking back 
over the pathway of my life, I can say, " Let every 
sunny spot of the past be darkened, rather than mem- 
ory should lose one of the tear-hallowed places where 
I knelt in darkness, and prayed." Gethsemanes have 
deeper and grander meanings than Canas. 

The richer natures are the suffering natures. Give 
me for a friend one who, "with strong crying and 
tears," has battled with trial at midnight, and in 
thicker darkness of soul has prayed in agony, like 
Ajax, for light. Shallow and loose-rooted is the tree 
that has known only sunshine, and never felt the 
wrench and shock of the gale. God, who loves us like 
a father, though he pities, would rather that we 
patiently bear our burdens than be free from them. 
Paul tells us, " There was given to me a thorn in the 

44 



The Ministry of Affliction. 



flesh. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that 
it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My 
grace is sufficient for thee ; for my strength is made 
perfect in weakness." 

III.— AFFLICTION MAY HELP OR HARM. 

It is well to remember that the lessons of sorrow are 
easiest learned by the trustful and submissive. God's 
best gifts may turn to curses in the hands that do not 
receive them rightly. It is a fearful fact that we have 
the power of turning the best intentions toward us into 
the worst results. It is not the fault of the sunlight, 
that while the diamond gives out all its rays, and 
flashes a many-faced jewel, the charred wood absorbs 
all its beams, and becomes only a dirty bit of coal. It 
is not the fault of the sunlight that its beams turn one 
place into a garden, and of another place make only a 
desert. It is not the fault of the sunlight that, beneath 
its shining, a bed of flowers lifts up its fragrance to 
God, and that, beneath the same shining, a steaming 
pile of filth reeks offence and disease in all nostrils. 
These opposite results are determined by the qualities 
of the objects themselves. So if trouble sanctify and 
elevate one person, and harden and imbitter another, 
we should look for the explanation of the opposite 
results, not in the trouble, but in the hearts ; for some 
hearts, like the charcoal, can turn the very sunlight 
into blackness. 

45 



Light on the Cloud. 



IV. — TROUBLE DEVELOPS SYMPATHY. 

One blessed result of sorrow, when received as a 
part of life's wisely ordered training, is the culture 
and development of human sympathy. George Eliot, 
who will not be accused of undue leaning toward 
Christian teaching, has touched the secret of this les- 
son where she says, " We can hardly learn humility 
and tenderness enough, except by suffering." 

History and observation teach us that there is 
nothing that more frequently contracts and callouses 
the heart than prosperity. They who are born and 
cradled in luxury can have no genuine appreciation of 
what it means to feel the tooth of want, or the chill of 
neglect's cold shoulder. It is the flourishing business 
man, determined to be rich, who is inclined to look 
coldly on the suffering child, or push rudely one side 
the pitiful claims of those whose principal crime is 
being born to ignorance and want ; it is the daughter 
of ease and wealth who can ride gayly past the com- 
fortless tenements, crammed with filth and wretched- 
ness, and enter with zest upon the pleasures of society 
or the home-circle, and be haunted by no shuddering 
shapes of suffering or sin : but let such as these be 
touched by " the finger of God," and they learn that 
even their petted and pampered hearts can thrill with 
so vulgar a thing as pain. Let them drift to the horrible 
verge of bankruptcy, and look over and down into the 
hungry abyss of want, and thev learn to think of the 
46 



The Ministry of Affliction, 



common pit of humanity from which they were digged. 
They find that community in tears marks all mankind 
as one. The dead hand of some friend has often 
introduced the smiling into the great brotherhood of 
sorrow, and touched the soul with tenderness for all 
that is sad in human life. 

The thoughtless, self-contained, friend-contracted 
mother, whose ribbon death has taken away, leaving 
in its place only a tell-tale bit of crape — she now 
looks out upon the world through a tomb gateway, 
and sees all in the light of a dear white face. And, oh, 
how changed is the face of the earth ! and what another 
thing it seems to live ! To-day, as she whirls in her 
carriage through the suburb, and passes a little train 
of weepers, she does not hold back her pity till she 
finds out their station in society. Her thoughts at 
once go back in tears to the curtained chamber where 
stands a rosewood crib all empty, and to the drawer 
where are put away the tiny white slippers that hold 
the shape of a pair of little feet whose restless patter 
will be heard no more ; and, as her eyes grow dim, all 
her pride and station fade away, and she is only a 
mother, whose heart throbs in sympathy with all who 
have loved and lost. And think you that in the sight 
of God, who regards hearts as higher than pockets or 
jewels, those womanly tears are not more precious 
than all her silks and horses and station ? Not 
because he is a God who loves tears and sorrow, but 
because he does love the divine humanity that tears 



Light on the Cloud. 



and sorrow indicate and develop. When sorrow has 
wrought sympathy, and sympathy has grown into 
unselfish love and action, behold ! the mother has 
become like God ; for unselfish love and action are his 
essential nature : therefore may the love of God per- 
mit affliction ; because it is a sculptor of such won- 
drous art, that it can take a selfish, animal, stony heart, 
and by its sharp cuttings shape it into the likeness of 
the divinest beauty. 

V. — TEARS CLEANSE THE VISION. 

Affliction so washes the eyes with tears as to give* 
clear and correct views of values and proportions. 

We fix our heart on something, and soon it is taken 
away. This is not caprice, arbitrariness, sovereignty, 
God saying, " I am strong, and therefore have a right 
to do as I will, and compel devotion of all to me." I 
have no belief in such solutions of the problems of 
human sorrow. God has no right to any thing merely 
because he is strong. He has a right to do justly and 
mercifully, like ourselves. Therefore, though we may 
not always see, we must hold that what he does is love 
and mercy, or else he is no God. Let us look at this. 

It would be right not only, but merciful and loving, 
for God to teach us the true end of life by any and all 
necessary means ; would it not ? This were better and 
kinder than to let us wake up by and by to find our- 
selves mistaken, and life wasted. If a ship be in peril, 
it is wise and right to throw any and all treasure over- 
4 s 



+ 



The Ministry of Affliction. 



board that may be needful to lighten it, and avert the 
danger. And a safe arrival in port becomes a justifi- 
cation of any measures that were necessary to tide 
her over the rocks, and float her on her passage. 

VI. — THE TRUE END OF LIFE. 

The true end of life for an immortal must be some- 
thing that is itself immortal ; for otherwise, when the 
treasure is perished, the immortal must pass on empty- 
handed, and in want. To say, then, that any thing 
only material is the true and proper end for man to 
seek is as absurd as to say that the child is born 
to find the object of its existence in the cradle. And 
to see a man just stepping off the stage of life with no 
care for any thing but possessions and amusements, 
his thought and heart all untrained and undeveloped, 
is as pitiable as to find a strong young man, in all the 
vigor of fresh maturity, spending the livelong day 
astride of his rocking-horse. 

Suppose, then, we care for nothing but wealth. If 
God be our father, and really love us, he would only 
be treating us wisely to take it away ; for one of life's 
best lessons is to learn that money alone is poor food 
for the real high nature of man. We become ab- 
sorbed in the pursuit of pleasure. The fair-skinned 
apple we grasp at turns to ashes on our lips. This 
only means that bitterness and disappointment must 
surely come to those who bend down their higher 
faculties, and degrade them to the level of the lower. 



Light on the Cloud. 



We chase some outward success. We miss it. Not 
that God does not care for the kind of life we lead ; 
but we were forgetting the true goal. Success does 
not consist in bringing to pass a certain outward 
thing, but in the quality of character we develop, no 
matter in what circumstances. 

Christ's whole life was a failure, judged by the con- 
ventional standards of earth. Dying at thirty-three, 
he stood by his cross, hated by the rabble, scorned 
by the mighty and learned, pitied by Pilate, deserted 
by the few timid ones he had taught to love him ; and 
yet, in all the ages since, the cross has been the sym- 
bol of victory. And this outcast one reigns over a 
kingdom of thought and hope and love, in compari- 
son with which the empires of Caesar or Napoleon 
seem dwarfed and small. We see, at last, that the 
grand aim and end of humanity is the culture and 
development of the moral, the godlike, in us. Now 
light breaks. The radiance of this thought bursts 
through the heavy rolling masses of cloud that have 
darkened the world ; and where was only chaos an 
orderly creation and a meaning appear. 

VII. — LIFE A SCHOOL. 

We see that life is a discipline, the world a school, 
and that the only way to understand it is to learn the 
true end of our training. The child at school, whose 
head is tired with knotty questions of mathematics, 
or who pores over some hard lesson till the letters 
50 



The Ministry of Affliction. 



swim and run together, and the page is spattered with 
tears, may think — and with apparent reason, as things 
look to him — that father and mother are cruel, and 
the teacher a set tormentor, having no better design 
than to ruin his happiness, and keep him away from 
the sunny fields and the pleasant playgrounds. But 
when, standing on the threshold of home, with his 
back on his childhood, and his face set toward the 
great world of earnest life, he looks out over the range 
and meaning of manhood, the tears he sheds are tears 
of gratitude, that firmly always, sternly when needful, 
they kept him to the hard toil of preparation. So 
when we stand with back turned on the then receding 
world, and from the threshold of eternity look out 
over the unmeasured range of the endless life, and 
catch a glimpse of what eternity means, we shall see 
why hard questions were given our intellects, and 
heavy burdens were laid upon our hearts. God for- 
give our weakness ! we are only little children, crying 
over our lessons now. Then when you ask me in 
your complaint, " Of what use is love, when the 
precious objects fail so soon ? " I answer, " Love is its 
own grand, great end. To have developed that god- 
like attribute in your heart is worth all the tears and 
heartaches of your whole life." 

VIII. —A PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

At the time of the first snow-fall, I heard a pear-tree 
in my garden sighing to itself as it shuddered in the 

5* 



Light on the Cloud. 



November wind, and saying, " To what end is summer, 
if it must go away so soon ? Why have I basked in 
the blessed sunshine, and drank the evening dews, if 
now I am to be left by them both to the bitterness of 
this wintry desolation ? " And it writhed and moaned 
in the agony of the storm. But an ancient apple-tree 
near by replied, " You have forgotten that you have 
helped beautify the garden with the luxuriance of 
your foliage ; that you have sweetened the air with 
the odor of your blossoms ; that you have gladdened 
the household by the lusciousness of your fruits ; that 
children have played under your shade ; and, more 
than all, that you have grown, and that you still retain 
the gift of the summer in full six inches of length of 
bough, by which amount you are nearer the sky, 
stronger to bear the storm, readier to meet the com- 
ing of another spring, and fitter to enter on its 
new career with advantage." 

Then said I, " My dear ones are gone. Yes ; but 
the influence of the summer of their lives is left upon 
me. My heart is larger and warmer, and more open, 
and I am better fitted, because of rejoicing in their 
light, and resting under their shadow for the coming 
spring of immortality, where the sun shall never go 
down." 

IX.— AFFLICTION LIFTS UP THE LIFE. 

Affliction may do for us another thing, — give us a 
divine discontent with present imperfection. How 

52 



The Ministry of Affliction. 



many a human history did David write when he said, 
; ' Before I was afflicted, I went astray ; but now have 
I kept thy word " ! The worst calamity that could 
befall a man is letting alone, if he be content with 
the partialisms of the present. From the bottom of 
the heart I pity them that are satisfied. There is no 
sadder picture in all Bunyan's wondrous gallery than 
that of the man whose soul was contented with the 
muck-rake, so that he did not care any thing about the 
crown and the angel just above his head. To see a 
man in exile is bad enough : to see him sitting down 
there forgetful of home and country is unspeakably 
worse. The most fatal condition on earth is that of 
the lotos-eaters, who have given up ever doing any 
thing, or going anywhere, and wish to be let alone to 
eat and sleep and dream. We respect the captive 
Israelites at Babylon when they hang their harps on 
the willows, and, refusing to sing, swear never to for- 
get Jerusalem so long as tongue can move, or hand 
retain its cunning. They are men, and will yet get 
back to their country. But the supine slave, who is 
happy in the conqueror's hands, and will play to amuse 
his master, —him we repay with contempt or pity. The 
captive may be brave and generous : the contented 
captive is degraded. It is not because a person is 
ignorant we sorrow, but that he is satisfied with ignor- 
ance, and thinks he is wise. 

53 



Light on the Cloud. 



X.— AFFLICTION TEACHES A NOBLE DISCONTENT. 

One blessed fruit of affliction, then, is a noble dis- 
content with an imperfect life, and a longing after a 
completer future. We all of us sometimes catch 
glimpses of a nobler and grander ideal than we have 
yet approached a realization of. How utterly short of 
the mark, then, and unworthy, it is to settle down for 
permanence in our present low conditions ! A young 
man in college has forgotten what he is there for, and 
is sinking down into an animal satisfaction with the 
common routine of the day. He is taken up with 
the gymnasium, the table, the town excitements, the 
rounds of society. He no longer strives for honors, 
and is neglecting all fit preparation for the real work 
of life. The way to bless him truly is not to give him 
his fill of these things he seeks until the years crowd 
him out into the great world, a grown-up child, igno- 
rant, untrained, and ready only to be the victim of 
strength and cunning that are stronger and shrewder 
than he. If you will really bless and help him, strip 
him of all these, though his heart ache, and his eyes 
weep, and put him to hard training and study, that he 
may come through his course a man. 

So, if any of you feel yourselves "rich and in- 
creased with goods," and to " have need of nothing ; " 
if you are contented with dinners and houses' and 
equipages and society ; if you have not risen to hun- 
ger for love and truth and righteousness, the invisible 

54 



The Ministry of Affliction. 



spiritual treasures of God, — then your true welfare is 
not to be found in getting more of what you have 
already. Should my prayer for your highest good be 
heard, it might mean the blighting of your hopes, a 
shadow over your pathway, the wreck of your treas- 
ure-ships, and arms empty of some friend you now 
clasp close to your heart. Many a man has his hands 
so full of rubbish, that he cannot grasp or hold the real 
riches that are divine and permanent. If a vessel, 
with all sail set, and breezes fair, be gliding over a 
sunny ocean toward a siren shore, where deceitful 
death sits smiling under a glassy sea, pray God send a 
tempest upon such an one, shatter the masts, tear the 
sails in shreds, and send her staggering over the 
seething billows, if only thus she may be driven off 
that fatal coast, and blown, gale-scarred and broken, 
into some port of safety. 

The quaint old English poet, George Herbert, has 
finely taught this lesson in the following lines : — 

Whan God at first made man, 
Having a glass of blessings standing by, 
lt Let us," said he, " pour on him all we can : 
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, 

Contract into a span." 

So strength first made a way ; 
Then beauty flowed ; then wisdom, honor, pleasure : 
When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, 

Rest in the bottom lay. 
55 



Light on the Cloud. 



" For if 1 should," said he, 
" Bestow this jewel also on my creature, 
He would adore my gifts, instead of me, 
And rest in nature, not the God of nature : 

So both should losers be. 

" Yet let him keep the rest, 
But keep them with repining restlessness : 
Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 

May toss him to my breast." 

XL —AFFLICTION TESTS, AND GIVES ASSURANCE. 

Paradoxical though it be, only that man is at rest 
who attains it through conflict. It was Jesus, " the 
man of sorrows," who said, " My peace I give unto 
you." This peace, born of conflict, is one, not like 
the deadly hush preceding the tempest, but the 
serene and pure-aired quiet that follows it, when the 
sun shines out, and the bow is seen across the drip- 
ping cloud. It is not generally the prosperous one, 
who has never sorrowed, who is strong and at rest. 
His quality has never been tried, and he knows not 
how he can stand even a gentle shock. The building 
that has stood the earthquake, and held to its strong 
foundations when the ground staggered, this is the 
one that people can run to for shelter when the com- 
ing tremor is felt. He is not the safest sailor who 
never saw a tempest : he will do for fair-weather ser- 
vice ; but when the storm is rising, send him below, 
56 



The Ministry of Affliction, 



and place at the important post the man who has 
fought out a gale, who has tested his ship, who knows 
her hulk sound, her rigging strong, and her anchor- 
flukes able to grasp and hold by the ribs of the 
world. 

When first affliction comes upon us, how every thing 
gives way ! Our clinging, tendril hopes are snapped, 
and our heart lies prostrate and draggled, like a vine 
that the storm has torn from its trellis. But when 
the first shock is past, and we are able to look up, 
and say, " It is the Lord," faith lifts the shattered 
hopes once more, and binds them so fast in golden 
chains to the feet of God, that all the biting winds of 
adversity shall never break them down again. Thus 
the end is confidence, safety, and peace. 

Such is the experience always that leads from an 
untried life to one proved and strong. Affliction is the 
crucible in which it is settled whether we be gold or 
not. And when once we come out purged, when we 
are moulded and minted, when the pressure of grief 
has stamped upon us the " image and superscription " 
of the spiritual and divine, then we are ready for the 
king's treasury. The discipline is over, and we are 
fit for the vision of God. 

This glorious end it is that justifies the journey. 
As we stand on the hills of God, and feel the first 
flush and thrill of the immortal life, we may then 
thank our Father that tears and loss and death pur- 
sued us ; for we shall see how they drove us out of 

57 



Li*ht on the Cloud. 



animal into spirit, out of low conditions into high, out 
of cloud into sunshine. 

I cannot close more beautifully than by asking you 
to stand with me by the side of the aged seer of Pat- 
mos, and, while he lifts the veil of his vision, to look 
with me on the outcome of earth-time struggle and 
sorrow, as he has pictured it in noble poetry : " After 
this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no 
man could number, of all nations and kindreds and 
people and tongues, stood before the throne, clothed 
with white robes, and palms in their hands ; and cried 
with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which 
sitteth upon the throne. And all the angels stood 
round about the throne, and fell before the throne on 
their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen. 
Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and 
honor and power and might be unto our God for ever 
and ever. Amen. And one of the elders answered, 
saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in 
white robes ? and whence came they ? And I said unto 
him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These 
are they which came out of great tribulation. There- 
fore are they before the throne of God, and serve him 
day and night in his temple. They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more; and God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes." — Rev. vii. 9, 17. 
58 



"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP." 

HE resteth now. No more his breast 
Heaves with its weary breath : 
Pain sits no longer on the brow 
Where lies the calm of death. 
Sunk to his rest, like tired child, 

He lies in slumber deep, 
Soft folded in the arms of him 
Who " giveth his beloved sleep." 

Nay, doth he rest ? No : day nor night 

He resteth not from praise : 
His spirit, winged with rapture, knows 

No more earth's weary ways. 
But ever toward the Infinite 

His flight on, upward, doth he keep ; 
For he gives active tirelessness 

Who " giveth his beloved sleep." 

59 



Light on the Cloud. 



And while we grope our doubtful way 

Tear-blinded in the night, 
He reads the meaning of our grief 

Clear writ in heavenly light. 
And looking o'er the path he trod, 

Weary, ofttimes, and rough and steep, 
He knows 'twas goodness led him on, 

And gave to " his beloved, sleep." 

We, heart-sore pilgrims, follow him : 

It is not for his fate we moan, 
But that we " see his face no more," 

And now must travel on alone. 
He, standing on the hills of God, 

Doth brightly beckon while we weep. 
We'll rest not here, but hasten on : 
The night is short, the morning's dawn 

Shall greet us rising from our sleep. 
60 



PEACE. 

THERE is a peace that broods in the dull air 
Above the rank green of malarious pools, 
When heaven is leaden, and the wind that cools 
Sinks heavy with stagnation everywhere. 

But there is death in it, and foul decay. 
The tempest then is mercy. Up the edge 
Of the dull sky roll thunder-caps. The sedge 

Moans answer to the storm yet far away. 

The whole earth dreads the coming, and sits still, 
Shrinking before the fury of its wrath : 
The far wheels rumble on their darkening path, 

And rush to execute the tempest's will. 

Through the dun clouds the lightning's flashing blade 
Cleaves red with anger ; and the echo loud 
Leaps to the trembling earth from smitten cloud : 

Such turmoil an unhealthy peace hath made. 

61 



Light on the Cloud, 



But now the storm is over ; and the tears 
Hang dripping on the eyelids of the flowers ;' 
And many a breach is left in earth's fair bowers ; 

And many a heart still trembles with its fears. 

But, oh, how clear the sky, and fresh the earth ! 

The tears are jewels in the bright sunshine ; 

And on the trees, and every tremulous vine, 
The birds to their new melody give birth. 

The thrill of tempest gives awakened life ; 
And all the spring lifts higher ; and the air, 
Sweet as heaven's breath, and balmy everywhere, 

Sheds a new peace, and sweeter, for the strife. 

God holds life's tempests in his hand ; and they 
Fly, swift-winged angels, to perform his will ; 
And after clearing storms, the " Peace, be still," 

Spreads the blue sky where clouds have passed away 
1875. 62 



PART THIRD. 



"THE DIVINE ALCHEMY." 
I. — CAN HARD THINGS BE "FOR GOOI 

WHEN Paul says to the Romans, "And we 
know that all things work together for good to 
them that love God," it is evident, that, by the "all 
things," he means all hard things, all rough things, 
all dark things. And yet he does not leave out what 
men call goods, wealths, prosperities : and I take it 
that no one who looks over the world can doubt that 
these latter as often work us evil as the former : that 
is, we are in as much need of an assurance that we 
shall be delivered from prosperity as we are that 
adversity shall not harm us. 

But now we have to do with those things that 
thrust themselves most upon our attention. — the sad 
things of life. These God makes our servants. 
They are at work piling up for us the "weight of 
glory." By the divine alchemy of God's wondrous 
processes, though they be base metals, they are 
touched by his finger into gold, and made into the 

63 



Light on the Cloud. 



wrought-work and glittering beauty of the crown that 
shall be given unto us " in that day." 

This is the hard thing for us to believe ; and that it 
is so at first seems to me only natural. We ask our- 
selves, " Can such things as we see around us every 
day be best ? Can they be consistent with a theory 
that makes God good ? Ought we to be reconciled to 
them, and to trust ? " 

II.— IS A BROKEN HOME "FOR GOOD"? 

Here, for instance, is a home. The father has built 
up an outside prosperity, and made a nest for the 
household. The mother has touched every thing into 
life and tasteful form within. Carpets are on the 
floors, pictures are on the walls, music and cheer in 
all the rooms. Children play on the stairs ; and in the 
nursery the baby's crib is the throne of the family, 
around which circle all love and service. The mother 
is strong in' the support of him who is the husband 
(the bond of the house), binding together all its activi- 
ties and hopes and blessings ; and the father is in- 
spired in his outside toil by the love of the home that 
is the spring of his life. And it is not a selfish home, 
as many are, whose power is a power for evil ; but it 
is a home like that of Bethany, that Jesus loves ; for 
morning and evening the light of God shines down on 
the kneeling household, while angels hover about a 
spot as sacred as that where they cast their crowns 
before the throne in heaven. 
64 



The Divine Alchemy. 



Is this an ideal home ? No. I am only picturing 
many a home in Boston, many a home in every city 
and town of our land ; for these houses, where the 
weak, troubled, fallible sons and daughters of God 
walk and pray their way heavenward are as dear to 
the heavenly Father as any fairest spot in the upper 
city. 

To such a home as this, then, that seems a very 
training-school for heaven, comes death. The pillar 
of the household, the father, falls. It matters not 
under what blow — he dies. Around the open grave, 
the crushed mother stands with the clinging children, 
that only half know their loss ; and their light goes 
out, as the clods fall, in a darkness that seems pierced 
by no single ray of mercy or good. They go back 
to the desolate house, that must be given up ; and 
then the mother goes out to struggle with a world of 
which she knows little, in the brave but doubtful en- 
deavor to keep together the children that are at once 
her burden and her hope. 

Dare any one now say that this is good ? Is it 
merciful ? Is it kind ? Is it better than that the father 
should live, and care for, and train and lead, the chil- 
dren up into noble manhood and womanhood ? No! 
it is not good. In itself it is evil, and only evil. It is 
a misfortune, a curse. It is not something to be 
accepted willingly ; nor to be accepted at all, if one 
could help it. The Bible never calls such things 
good, nor says that we ought to be willing to have 

6s 



Light on the Cloud. 



them come. It is not Christian resignation to take all 
things indifferently, and to hold yourself in such a 
state of mind that you would be willing to see all 
loved things slip out of your hands at any time. The 
heart must be killed before you can come to that con- 
dition ; and then you were no better than a post. God 
gave us our affections, and they are as sacred as the 
Bible, and we can never be willing to lose what we 
love. 

True resignation is simply this : to have such a 
trust in God, that, for his sake, we will bear evil, and 
bear it patiently, believing that he will make it work 
out good for us in the end. Evil can never become 
good ; but God can rule it, and make it serve us. 

III. — IS LOSS OF PROPERTY "FOR GOOD"? 

Take another case. A man of wealth was living in 
Chicago : able and upright as a man of business, he 
had gathered riches in full hands, until he had houses 
and stores and bonds. Being generous and humane, 
he was a helper of all good causes. Churches, mis- 
sions, schools, asylums, reforms, and all the move- 
ments of our modern civilization, felt the impulse of 
his wealth. His home was the seat of refinement, of 
Christian culture, and of all humane and godlike 
graces. 

The fire came with the sunset; and the dawn looked 
on his desolation. He was not simply poor. He was 
well, and could build up a business again ; but every 

66 



The Divine Alchemy. 



Christ-like cause was weaker for his crippling, — 
churches were poorer, and missions were weak, and 
children were unfed and untaught, and every good 
cause was wounded, because of the calamity that had 
overtaken him. 

Was it a good thing that he was thus crippled and 
overthrown ? No ! by no means. It was a terrible 
evil, something to be fought against and shunned, and 
accepted only on compulsion. Because God is able to 
change water into wine, it is no less water at the first. 
Because God can bring the dawn out of darkness, that 
does not make midnight mid-noon. Because a gen- 
eral can wring victory out of overthrow, that does not 
make the first defeat a triumph. 

IV.— IS LOST HEALTH "FOR GOOD"? 

One case more. A young man of marked ability 
loses his health in college, and thus he goes out into 
the world with brain-power that the body is not able 
to carry, like an engine in the hold of a steamer with 
more capacity than the old rickety hulk is able to bear. 
He is the depositary of learning that he can never be 
able to dispense : he has heart-power of love and devo- 
tion that the world will be poorer for losing. 

Ought this, now, to be a matter of indifference 
to him ? Ought he to be willing to be sick and incapa- 
ble ? Ought he to lie down without a struggle, and 
say, " It is well " ? No ! it is not well. It is not well 
either for the world or for himself. In itself it is a 

67 



Light on the Cloud. 



loss to him, and a loss to others. The only ground of 

submission is the faith in God that finds utterance in 

the words of Paul ; and notice that they are not, AH 

things are good, but, " All things work for good to 

them that love God." God is able to make them help 

us. 

V.— THE PROBLEM A DARK ONE. 

And now, to come close home to a minister's expe^ 
riences, how often do we pray amid wrecked homes, 
and over dead faces ! A father leaves a house that the 
mother left years before, and it ceases to be a home 
henceforth. An aged mother leaves the household of 
a daughter ; and though she may be a ministering' 
spirit still, she has become one of the invisible. And 
last and saddest of all, so far as the earth-side is con- 
cerned, a young wife fades from the sight of her hus- 
band, and, beside the larger ones, leaves a boy who 
shall never remember the look of a mother's face. 
How strange and sad a manhood must be that never 
recalls a mother ! 

Such things as these make the problem of evil and 
of faith in God. They are not good : they are only 
evil, and to be endured because we have to endure 
them. They do not seem consistent with the loving 
kindness of a sovereign God. The great difficulty is 
to believe in God while we look at these facts. They 
do not seem capable of being reconciled. Particularly 
is this true while the freshness of our grief is upon us. 
We are hardly in condition to reason : we can only weep. 

68 



The Divine Alchemy. 



VI. — GOD NO GOD, IF NOT GOOD. 

But. there must be some answer to this enigma, 
some way up out of the dark into the light of peace. 
Let us see if we can find a clew that will lead us 
thither. 

What' is it that Paul says ? " We know that all 
things work together for good to them that love God." 

This, certainly, is what we should expect beforehand, 
were it not for so many facts that look the other way. 
We expect to see fathers arranging all their business 
and plans and pleasures for the good of their children. 
The wonder would be to find it otherwise. And were 
there such a case, we should say he was an unnatural 
father. And were there some appearances that looked 
like disregard of their welfare, we should seek in his 
interest to explain them as being damaging supposi- 
tions against his character. And so, if a case could be 
made out against God of real neglect of his creatures, 
it would be the destruction of our faith in his holiness 
and his love. It is no answer to say that God is king, 
and has a right to dispose of us as he wills. Kingship 
confers no such right. Say it with all reverence, but 
say it firmly, God were no God, were he capable of 
disregarding the welfare of a sparrow, or of trampling 
out the rights of a single worm. 

69 



Light on the Cloud. 



VII. — WHAT IS OUR "GOOD" 

Evil can only be justified by a greater good. Not 
that we must always see the good before we can 
believe ; but there must be some reason in our knowl- 
edge of God for believing that he will not do wrong, 
before there can be any faith in him that can walk 
trustingly through the darkness. 

Such, then, being the presumption, let us see what 
we know of fact. It must all turn on the meaning of 
the word " good " in the language of Paul. 

If health is necessary to the "good" of life, then 
is life a failure ; for only very few enjoy any continued 
condition of health. 

If wealth is necessary to the " good " of life, then 
the existence of most of us is a failure ; for the rich 
are very few among the masses of mankind. 

If freedom from affliction, bereavement, loss, be 
necessary to the " good " of life, the case of most of 
us is very much the same ; for so wide is the basis 
of the poet's words, that almost every home is includ- 
ed in the sad echo of his verse : — 

" There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
But one dead lamb is there : 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
But has one vacant chair." 

It follows, then, that God is not strong and wise 
and good, or else that sickness and poverty and 



The Divine Alchemy. 



death are consistent with his being such ; and they 
can be thus consistent only when it is true that free- 
dom from these is not necessary to our highest wel- 
fare. 

Just this is the ground of our confidence. God can 
take away health and property and friends in this 
world, and leave us the best things still. The great 
thing that he cares for in our life is, that we should 
become holy and pure and true ; that we should grow 
up as his children into his likeness. Whatever is 
needful to this is needful to our "good." Whatever 
is not, he may take away, and not show himself any 
thing but fatherly and kind. Nay. more than this, he 
may show his kindness and love in taking them away, 
if, as sometimes happens, we be allowing them to 
stand in the way of our attaining the higher good. 

The playthings, the companions, and the home, are 
invaluable to a child ; but he who gets into a true 
manhood without them is better off than he who, 
having all these, fails of the manhood. The books 
and associations and tutors of college are of immense 
advantage to a boy ; but he who gets culture and self- 
mastery without their aid is blest beyond him, who, 
with them all, comes out unfit for the contest of life. 
So he who gets heaven, and finds God, through the 
loss of all things, is rich beyond the power of lan- 
guage to express ; while he who goes through life in 
health and wealth, and loving, friendly associations, 
and yet misses true knowledge of himself and God, 



Light on the Cloud. 



is poor beyond all conceivable depths of poverty. 
Whether worldly goods come or go, then, is a matter 
of comparative indifference. By and by, I take it, 
it will make little matter with us, whether we had this 
sickness or not; whether we gained such a picture, or 
house, or horse, or farm, or office : then it will be, 
How did I live ? and what have I become ? 

In the great questions of character and God and 
eternity, then, these difficulties find their solution. 
Since the great " good " of life is godlikeness, we are 
able to see how it may be possible for God to permit 
afflictions while still he loves, cares for, and watches 



VIII. — THE CONDITION OF THE PROMISE. 

But this promise has a most important limitation. 
"All things work together for good." The sentence 
does not stop there, but goes on with the addition, " to 
them that love God." Why is this ? Does it have 
its ground in God's will toward us, or in our free use 
of the things which he sends ? I cannot believe in 
the former ; for we must believe that God wills evil to 
no one, but desires that all men do right, and be blest. 
But all men do not do right ; and all are not blessed. 

If the text was an unconditional promise, we should 
know that, so far as this world is concerned, it was 
not true. We can see every day how a trial makes 
one man better, and another worse. A temptation 
strengthens one man, and becomes to another the 
72 



The Divine Alchemy. 



occasion of fall. Wealth cultivates one man's gener- 
osity, and makes another sordid and mean. Power 
ennobles one, and makes him a helper of his fellows ; 
and to another it is only the means of showing how 
contemptible and selfish a man can become. It is 
true, then, not alone of affliction, but of that as one 
of the " all things," that it works out "good" only 
for " them that love God." 

From the view that we have just taken of what the 
" good " of life means, it is apparent that this must 
be so. If the good that these things work out is 
godlikeness, of course it follows that they who love 
God are the ones who get the good ; for they who 
love, and they only, become like God. 

IX. — WHO ARE "THEM THAT LOVE GOD"? 

But what is meant by "them that love God"? 
Most certainly we cannot limit and narrow down this 
phrase so as to make it include only those who carry 
about in their thought a defined conception of God's 
personality, and who are conscious of some feeling of 
personal affection for him. It must be broadened so as 
to include all those whose sympathies and whose gen- 
eral line of conduct are on the side of the righteousness 
and truth of the universe, and who believe that these 
are stronger than evil. If one casts the strength of 
his life on the Godward side of things, then he is so 
much in the line of the divine movements and work- 
ing that they shall help him onward and upward, in- 

73 



Light on the Cloud. 



stead of meeting him with opposition, and smiting him 
down. For God's laws help those who chime in with 
their tendencies and currents ; and they crush those 
who oppose them. With this definition, then, of 
" them that love God," it is of necessity true, in the 
nature of things, that for them, and them only, "all 
things work together for good." 

X.— LIKE CAUSES PRODUCE OPPOSITE RESULTS. 

They, then, to whom affliction comes as an evil, 
and whose result is evil and only that, have no just 
cause of complaint against God. Responsible charac- 
ter of necessity implies the free choice of the will. 
This character, of likeness to God, is the highest gift 
that Heaven can bestow. If we will not take it, if we 
will not look toward and struggle toward God, these 
things cannot work good for us. The limitation is not 
because God does not want to bless all alike, but 
because the constitution of things is such that his 
blessings can be blessings only to those inclined to 
good. That the same cause produces opposite results 
on opposite things, is a truism of nature. The sun 
makes one spot of ground a garden, and another a 
desert ; not because the sun is partial, but because 
of soil and water and seed, — differences all pertaining 
to the ground. The same sun lifts a rain-bringing 
and health-bestowing cloud from the surface of a 
clear lake, while, if it be impure and miasmatic, it fills 
the region with disease and death. The wind settles 



The Divine Alchemy. 



and strengthens one tree, causing it to run down and 
out its fibres through all the ground, clinging to stone 
and soil, until it defies the tempest. The same wind 
uproots and blights forever those trees that have no 
depth or grasp of root. Carbon becomes, in one set 
of circumstances, charcoal ; in another, a diamond. 
The daylight brings gladness to one heart, and grief 
to another. A father's kindness kindles gratitude and 
devotion in the heart of one boy, and encourages 
rebellion and disobedience in another. Severity chas- 
tens one, and maddens another. 

XL — EVIL MAY "WORK FOR GOOD." 

However fierce, then, the fire of trouble may be, 
the love of God can quench its flame. However 
sharp the dart that flies out against you, the love of 
God can turn its point. However impassable the gulf, 
the love of God can bridge it. The love of God turns 
every storm into a wind to drive our vessel homeward. 
Every wild beast that would desolate and devour, it 
harnesses to our chariot, and compels to grace our 
triumph. Sickness can only hasten us to that land 
where the cheek of health never fevers nor turns pale. 
Poverty is the successful operator that helps us win 
the true riches that thief, nor flood, nor fire, can ever 
seize from our grasp. Death only leads our friends 
and ourselves to a door that itself can never enter, 
and introduces us to an immortal company that never 
trembles at its name. There is no evil left to those 

75 



Light on the Cloud. 



who are wholly God's. "All things work together 
for good " to them. 

XII. — APPLES GET SWEET ONLY WHEN RIPE. , 

But we must trust the Father for the present. "It 
doth not yet appear what we shall be." " Light is 
sown for the righteous.'' Mark ! it does not say it has 
sprung up and come to harvest yet. It is sown : the 
song of " Harvest Home " comes by and by. 
-■ He who has never seen a wheat- field knows very 
little of what there is in a bag of grain ; and one would 
hardly think that the way to develop its beauty was to 
cast it into the ground, and crush it under the harrow, 
and make it die. But wait from spring till September, 
and the glory of the resurrection shall display the 
wisdom and goodness of Him who ordained that out 
of death life should spring up. 

So it does not seem to us the loving way of God to 
cast us into sorrow, to trouble us this way and that, to 
whelm us in waters of affliction, to bury our blooming 
hopes under the sod ; but wait for God's processes to 
ripen. Fruits that are green and bitter in June are 
soft-cheeked and sweet in September. Wait till God's 
processes are finished. The turning-lathe that has 
the sharpest knives produces the finest work. Wait 
for the harvest-hour. The snows of the north are 
not yet gone. The winter storms have raged above 
the fields ; but it shall appear that they only protected 
the buried grain, and the spring melting shall nourish 

7 6 



The Divine Alchemy. 



the hidden life ; and all the weathers of the year shall 
help it upward. The autumn will solve all questions, 
dissolve all doubts, vindicate all promises, and unfold 
the glory of the year. " Now no chastening for the 
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, never- 
theless ; afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of 
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." 

77 



LIFE IN DEATH. 

NEW being is from being ceased ; 
No life is but by death ; 
Something's expiring everywhere 
To give some other breath. 

There's not a flower that glads the spring 

But blooms upon the grave 
Of its dead parent seed, o'er which 

Its forms of beauty wave. 

The oak that, like an ancient tower, 
Stands massive on the heath, 

Looks out upon a living world, 
But strikes its roots in death. 

The cattle on a thousand hills 
Clip the sweet herbs that grow 

Rank from the soil enriched by herds 
Sleeping long years below. 

78 



Life in Death. 



To-day is but a structure built 

Upon dead yesterday ; 
And Progress hews her temple-stones 

From wrecks of old decay. 

Then mourn not death : 'tis but a stair 

Built with divinest art. 
Up which the deathless footsteps climb, 

Of loved ones who depart. 

79 



THE DEAD ACORN. 

I WALKED in the field one autumn day, 
And came where an oak-tree stood 
And talked with the winds of an elder day, 
And of nature's brotherhood. 

I sat me down by its ancient bole, 
And mused, till, in half dream, 

The real seemed fancy to my soul, 
And fancies real did seem. 

I noted where an acorn lay : 

The flecked sunbeams fell through, 

And the rain dripped on it day by day 
The warm, long summer through. 

The leaves and dust half covered o'er 
The burst and blackened shell ; 

I thought, " The dead arise no more : 
They perish where they fell." 

So 



The Dead Acorn. 



A gust then shook the leafy top 5 

Of the tree above my head, 
And a shower of acorns fair did drop 

Where the brother mast lay dead. 

And I heard a whisper as if they spoke, — 
Or was it the west wind's sigh ? — 

" O acorn child of the long-lived oak ! 
'Tis pity that you should die. 

" The beauty of your fair round form 
Is broken and blackened now : 

No more you'll dare the joy of the storm, 
Nor swing on your sunlit bough. 

" O, might one forever an acorn stay 
In the beauty of smooth, round shell, 

And rock in the sunshine every day, 
The universe were well ! " 

While thus the soughing voice wailed by 
With a moan as of falling tears, 

The dead climbed up into sunlit sky 
To a life of a hundred years. 

8x 



PART FOURTH. 



DEATH A BLESSING. 
I. — HARD TO BELIEVE IN DEATH. 

IN his letter to the Philippians Paul wrote, " To die 
is gain." Who of us can repeat the words of 
Paul ? Our throats choke up as we attempt to utter 
them. " To die, gain ? No : to live is gain. To die 
is a terrible necessity." So prevalent is the horrible 
conception of death, that it is difficult for us even to 
imagine how the apostle could speak so about it. 

Through disappointment or crime, some men come 
to such a disgust or fear of life, that they rush madly 
over the edge of the present, and make what they call 
"the leap in the dark." Like the poor victim that 
Hood has immortalized in his " Bridge of Sighs," 

they will go 

" Anywhere, anywhere, 
Out of the world." 

But this is not through any just conception of death, 
or desire for what is beyond. Life has become un- 
bearable, and they fling it away. 

82 



Death a Blessing, 



Into this condition of impatience and disgust had 
Job come, when he said, " I would not live alway." 
He had no view of death that made him long to go, 
but only views of life that made him hate to stay. 
Therefore these words ought never to be used, as they 
so often are in hymns and sermons, and hours of 
sorrow, as expressive of Christian resignation, or 
desire for the life beyond. 

II. — DIFFERENT THOUGHTS OF DEATH. 

Different nations, at different times, have imagined 
death under almost every kind of figure. With the 
old Aryan race of India, it is the soul of the first man 
come to call his descendants after him to the world 
below, where he rules them as king. To the ancient 
Hebrews it was a majestic angel standing in the 
presence of God, and going forth with its sword, 
from the point of which dripped a fatal drop that was 
called the "bitterness of death." To the Romans 
it was a female figure, in dark robes, with black 
wings and ravenous teeth, hovering over the earth, 
and darting here and there for her prey. To the 
Norsemen it was a dark, cloudy presence, sweeping 
on its victims like a whirlwind, wrapping them in its 
sable folds, and bearing them away. The commonest 
conception of Death, however, is as a skeleton brand- 
ishing a dart. The skull and cross-bones are his sym- 
bols, and he is crowned the grisly " King of Terrors." 
He is made a bugbear, worse than those which 
83 



Light on the Cloud. 



frighten children. Perhaps Milton's picture is as 
frightful, false, and unchristian as any that the human 
mind has conceived : ■ — 

" The shape, — 
If shape it might be called, that shape had none 
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, 
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed 
For each seemed either, — black it stood as night, 
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, 
And shook a dreadful dart : what seemed his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on." 

This creature waits for Satan to open the gates of 
hell, and then goes forth to devastate and ravage 
God's fair creation. This picture, from the fact that 
Milton stands as the great Christian theologic poet, 
perhaps has come to be the prevalent one among 
English readers ; and yet the heathen Greek has the 
most sensible and Christian conception of death that 
the world has known. Sometimes in Grecian art 
Death ar.d Sleep are twin boys, one black, the other 
white, borne slumbering in the arms of their mother, 
Night ; and then, again, Death stands as a sad-faced 
winged boy, with a butterfly at his feet, holding in his 
hand an inverted torch. The sadness of his face is 
the sorrow of the mourners. The butterfly is the 
deathless soul burst from its chrysalis body ; and the 
flame of the turned torch indicates the soul's descent 
to the under-world. 

84 



Death a Blessing. 



III. — DEATH IS NOTHING. 

All the dreadful images of death, that are so com- 
mon, are mere figments of the imagination, or the 
outright creations of superstition. They ought to be 
banished from all enlightened thought, art, and litera- 
ture. They were harmless enough, just as the talk 
of ghosts is harmless, if only they were regarded as 
merely poetic and fanciful. But when regarded as 
real, and permitted to cow and frighten the grown-up 
Christianity of the nineteenth century, then the harm- 
less fancies have become facts of so evil import that 
they ought to be reasoned away. 

When analyzed and looked at closely, death is noth- 
ing. I mean precisely what those words express. So 
far from its having any separate existence of its own, 
it is simply a cessation of existence. It is not even 
a shadow : it is nothing at all. 

All the pain and suffering and terror are but parts 
of the disordered life before death arrives. When it 
has come, it is simple sleep. It is peace, calmness, 
quiet. "The brain," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
" is a seventy-year clock. It is wound up at birth, 
the case is closed, and the key given into the hands 
of the angel of the resurrection." Death, then, is 
only the clock stopped. Or life may be compared to 
a music-box. It is made and wound up to play so 
many tunes. It runs on, now with the jingle and tin- 
kle of mirth, now wailing a plaintive minor, now swell- 

85 



Light on the Cloud. 



ing with the bravery of a battle-march, or ringing 
with a paean of triumph. When the tunes are all 
played, it simply stops. It is all there. No wheel 
is unbalanced, no cog is broken : it is only run down. 
Such is the natural and true idea of death. 

IV. — DEATH NOT A CURSE. 

Looked at broadly (all over the world, and through 
all time), it is not a punishment, it is not a curse, it is 
not even a calamity : it is a blessing, the wise ar- 
rangement of a loving God. Were the laws of God, 
physical, mental, and spiritual, only understood and 
obeyed, we may believe that death would generally 
be just this simple cessation of the run-down mechan- 
ism of the body. The diseases, sorrows, and pains 
that afflict life, and accompany death, — these are 
indeed curses, the results of sin, i.e., law-breaking ; 
but death itself is not a curse, neither is it the re- 
sult of sin. 

V. — DEATH NOT THE RESULT OF SIN. 

I am well aware that this last statement — death is 
not the result of sin — will go square against what 
most have been taught, and believe ; they will even 
think I am contradicting revelation. But let us see. 

The Talmud — a collection of Jewish writings and 
comments on the sacred books — teaches that if Adam 
had not sinned he would never have died, but would 
have gone to heaven by translation. It is the preva- 

86 



Death a Blessing. 



lent notion of Christendom, that Enoch and Elijah are 
specimens of what would then have been universal. 
Most of the Christian fathers, from Tertullian and 
Augustine down to Luther and Calvin, have held to 
this opinion. The Synod of Carthage^ in A.D. 418, 
and the Council of Trent, in 1545, both affirmed it. 
All have held that physical death in the world is the 
result of Adam's sin. This is popularly supposed to 
be the Bible doctrine. 

Here is one of the best specimens I know of the 
unsafety of trusting to a majority vote for the settle- 
ment of beliefs. This opinion has not one single 
particle of support outside of men's imaginations. 
Except by a casual reference or in some genealogical 
table, neither the name of Adam nor the Garden of 
Eden, is anywhere mentioned in the Old Testament, 
after leaving the third chapter of Genesis. Jesus 
never mentions them, or makes any allusion to this 
subject ; and, except two places by Paul, there is no 
reference to it anywhere in the New Testament. 
From the position the doctrine has occupied in history, 
theology, catechism, sermon, and the popular concep- 
tions of men, one might think the Bible full of it. 
But these three places, one in Genesis, and two in 
Paul, are all that can be found. And these, instead of 
being strong columns on which the doctrine of physi- 
cal death in Adam may rest, give it not one particle of 
support. It is as baseless as any "old wives' fable " 
or dyspeptic dream. In all these three cases, the 

87 



Light on the Cloud. 



reference is to moral death, as the result of a break- 
ing off from God ; and in not one of them to physi- 
cal. 

And then, as a fact that should set it forever at 
rest, it is now known that bodily death existed on 
earth uncounted ages before the popular date of 
Adam's creation. Enough creatures had died before 
six thousand years ago to cover the whole round 
globe three miles deep with bones. Of all the dust 
that now is fragrant in flowers, or waves green in 
trees, or blooms in human cheeks, or is tossed by the 
winds in our streets, there is not one grain that may 
not have lived and breathed as either animal or man. 
Death, then, having existed before sin, cannot be the 
punishment for sin, which only came into the world 
ages afterward. 

Pass now to some considerations that show the law 
of death a wise and blessed one. 

VI. — DEATH THE CONDITION OF LIFE. 

Dying is the necessary condition of all life and 
growth ; and thus, if these are blessings, so is 
death. 

" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit." This is Christ's expression of the uni- 
versal law, and is apparent everywhere. 

The lowest form of life that is known to man is the 
little microscopic germ-cell, from which all kinds and 

8S 



Death a Blessing. 



grades of life are developed. This cell spends the 
force that is in it, and dies, contributing its life to the 
higher organization. And so the growth of any thing 
is only through the continuous death and displace- 
ment of its parts. The outer skin of the body is 
composed of the dead bodies of innumerable little 
cells that have died to form a protecting armor for the 
tender parts within. 

All new life grows out of death. Every grave is the 
cradle of some new existence. The chemical elements 
of earth and air die, in order that the vegetable, tree, 
and flower may live. 

The little child you hold in your arms is growing 
large and strong by the dying and wasting of all its 
parts, and the constant supply of new material ; and, 
when seven or ten years are gone, one entire body 
will have died, in order that you may look upon a 
fairer and better, built up on its decay : why, then, 
should not " the outer man perish, while the inner 
man is renewed day by day " ? 

New being is from being ceased ; 

No life is but by death ; 
Something's expiring everywhere, 

To give some other breath. 

VII. — DEATH MERELY A CHANGE OF RESIDENCE. 

Look it in the face, strip off its accidents and sur- 
roundings, and it is simply the going away of some 

89 



Light on the Cloud. 



one from one place of residence to another. The sad 
accompaniments, apart from the disease and suffering 
which result from broken law, are chiefly of our own 
imagining. The consciousness of pain that accom- 
panies dissolution is generally very slight, or none at 
all ; the languor of sleep comes gently on, the hands 
drop, the eyes close, and there is rest. The soul that 
has so many times already thrown off its old and 
assumed a new body, only that it has done it piece- 
meal, has now simply thrown it off once for all, and 
assumed a new one of another kind ; now it has taken 
on not another fleshly, but a spiritual and undying 
one. The body left, and that we hide away in the 
ground, is not our friend, any more than any other of 
the five or eight bodies that have already been cast 
aside during the forty or seventy years. The new 
body has gone up out of our range, and left its shell 
behind, just as the butterfly floats off beyond the 
grubs that may wonder over the death and decay of 
the chrysalis. 

One of the grandest uses of our imagination ought 
to be to detach our thoughts and affections from the 
grave and its deposit, and lift them, up to the reality 
of our friends in heaven. By the side of every open 
grave, let us figure to ourselves the angel of the resur- 
rection, and let us hear him say, " He is not here : he 
is risen." Death, then, is only departure. 

We bear the going away of friends in this life, and, 
on the whole, even rejoice in it. We send our chil- 
90 



Death a Blessing. 



dren away to school, trusting them to teachers, and 
are all uncertain as to whether we shall ever see them 
again : not unfrequently they go off for a longer stay 
than the one that may separate us from the last dear 
one who has gone to be educated and taught of God. 
We let our friends go to distant cities and lands on 
business, or to seek their fortunes ; and many a time 
they go away to be changed and lost more than they 
who die. Shall we grudge their entrance upon the 
everlasting inheritance of bliss as heirs of God? We 
place our hands in blessing on their heads, and trust 
our children in marriage to the keeping of other 
homes. We know not to what fate they go. We have 
not one-half the reason for trusting the husband or 
wife whose hand they take, that we have to trust the 
angel who comes to lead them up to the "house of 
God, eternal in the heavens." 

"Ofond! O fool and blind ! 

To God I gave with tears, 
But when a man like grace would find, 

My soul put by her fears. 
Ofond! O fool and blind ! 

God guards in happier spheres : 
That man will guard where he did bind, 

Is hope for unknown years." 

VIII. — ENDLESS EARTH-LIFE A CURSE. 

Whatever the first thought may be, an endless or 
very much prolonged life on earth were a fearful 
curse. 

91 



Light on the Cloud. 



Picture it to yourself, of the race. At first, what 
frantic joy that no one was ever more to die ! Friend 
would clasp friend, and weep their gladness in each 
other's arms, that never were they to be separated any 
more. But let the years roll on. They have tasted 
every pleasure that earth can afford ; and they have 
tasted it again and again. They have visited every 
land, and exhausted every beauty. They have learned 
every truth, and discovered every fact and law that 
came within the range of their faculties and powers. 
They have drunk the cup of life to the bottom, and 
stand looking at its dregs. No pulse thrills with a 
new pleasure, beats quicker at sight of a new face, or 
stirs at the thought of a new achievement or a new 
reward. Like children shut in the nursery, they have 
done all they can think of, and tried every plaything, 
until they are tired and sick at heart. They ache to 
break out into some new field, or find some untried 
pleasure. 

And then, when the world was full, and no room 
could be found for any new-comers (which would be 
in a comparatively short time), the dearest and sweet- 
est of all human relationships must cease. No more, 
in all the ages, another wedded pair ; never to be seen 
again a babe upon its mother's breast; never the 
prattle of children around the firesides, or their laugh- 
ter on the playgrounds of the world. Homes have 
ceased ; and the earth, full of old people tired of each 
other's faces and voices, tired of day and night, tired 
92 



Death a Blessing. 



of sun and moon and stars, would wearily wait, and 
wait, and wait — for nothing at all, for no new thing 
could happen. 

I tell you, that, as never was agonizing prayer 
uttered yet, these deathless ones would pray to die, — 
to lie down in each other's arms, and float away to 
untried scenes ; or, if that were impossible, to sleep 
and never dream. 

Give the race an earthly immortality, and you ex- 
clude them from any thing greater or better than the 
earth can afford ; and they, in occupying it, would be 
no wiser than children would be who should agree to 
stay children forever, for the sake of having all the 
dolls and rattles and sugar-plums they wanted. No : 
God's grand manhood and womanhood are before us ; 
let us go on and find them. Take away death, and we 
become caged eagles when we are grown, beating our 
wings against the cruel bars that hinder our flight to 
the mountains. 

And then this gift conferred upon an individual, 
while others continued mortal, would be a heavier 
curse than when given to all the race. Let him retain 
his human affections, and what excruciating and help- 
less grief must it be, to stand like a rock in mid-river, 
while all earthly hopes and possessions and friends 
sweep by, and float forever out of sight ! His wife 
would grow old ; and, as she breathed her last, he 
would kiss her, not good-by for a while, but an ever- 
lasting farewell. The children, one by one, would 

93 



Light on the Cloud. 



grow up, and pass on out of sight. The last friend 
that knew his childhood would fade away, and leave 
him alone. How would he say, as has many an old 
man already, " All my friends and companions are 
gone : why am I left desolate, like the last leaf on 
the branch before winter? Let me go too, O my 
Father ! " But no : he must make new friends ; and 
then they would go. And so the heartrending ex- 
perience of losing, over and over again, all whom he 
loved, would be continually repeated, until by and 
by the world would become to him only one vast 
graveyard. Turn whichever way he might, he could 
see only the tomb of some one he loved. And, as he 
looked up, he must think of those who were his com- 
panions and equals, climbing ever higher and higher 
the pathways of knowledge and bliss, while he was 
compelled to stand stunted and low in the dust, at the 
opening of his career. If he could cease to sorrow 
over the decay and loss about him, it could only be 
by ceasing to be a man. 

An earthly immortality, then, could only be a cease- 
less multiplication of earthly ills, with no hope of the 
compensation of those who balance earth's wants 
with the fulness of heaven. Death, then, is one of 
God's blessed gifts to his beloved. When men pray 
that they may not die, they know not what they ask ; 
and God wisely and kindly treats them as a father 
would treat an unreasoning child. The baby cries for 
a knife that would endanger its existence, and is 

44 



Death a Blessing. 



denied. We cry for a life here that would cut off all 
that is best and highest of our existence ; and we are 
denied. And God be thanked for the denial ! 

Literature is full of conceptions of characters that 
somehow gain an immortality on earth. All the way 
down from the first, they are pictures of misfortune 
and misery. Old Tithon obtains from a goddess the 
promise that he shall never die. Aged and shftMselled 
and joyless, he leads a repulsive life, and longs and 
prays to die. At last a god blesses him with the fate 
of his brethren. The Witch of Cumae forever repents 
the gift from Apollo of as many years as she could 
hold grains of dust in her hand. The Wandering 
Jew traverses the earth forever, bearing the unmiti- 
gated curse of a deathless life. And all the stories 
of successful alchemists tell how they recoiled at last 
with horror from the attainment of the coveted prize. 
No ; I dare not ask God to lengthen my life a year 
beyond that which he has allotted me. Let my des- 
tiny be one with my earth-born brothers sted sisters. 
If I leave not them, they will soon leave me. Let 
me put my hand in thine, O Father, and lead thou me 
as thou wilt. 

IX. — DEATH THE CONDITION OF HIGHER LIFE. 

I wish to urge on your attention, by itself, one thing 
I have already touched on along with others, — the fact 
that death is necessary to our advance to a higher and 
better life. 

95 



Light on the Cloud. 



Then mourn not death : 'tis but a step 

That leads to something higher ; 
There were less shining ones above, 

Did not our friends expire. 

The struggles of death are only birth-throes. The 
life of the womb must cease before the life of the 
world can begin. When one is born out of earth into 
heaven, we have to stand on the earth-side, and cannot 
follow the outbursting life into its new conditions. 

Let us imagine intelligence in some of the lower 
forms of life, and through their eyes look at a few of 
the analogies of dying. An old acorn has lain a long 
time on the ground. The sun has shone on it, and the 
rain has wet it. By and by it begins to swell and 
burst. A tiny root strikes down, and a tiny stem lifts 
up. It looks broken and unshapely. One day the 
wind rattles down a shower of new acorns from the 
tree. They roll about, and look at their elder brother 
who is dying, and speculate on his condition and 
prospects. " Poor old acorn/' says one : " he has 
reached the limit of his existence. His fair, round 
shell is broken, and he can never repair it again. 
Only dust is ahead of him." And another says, 
"What a pity! O, if we could only stay acorns for- 
ever ! " and they lament together over their common 
decay. But what of the lamented acorn ? Has it 
indeed reached the end of its career ? Why, it has 
only now begun to live ! The little oakling, now born 
out of its shell into the air, begins to grow. It 



Death a Blessing. 



stretches itself up, and reaches out its arms, and 
shakes its strong limbs in sun and wind, and looks 
forward to its upper life of a hundred years. 

Some caterpillars one day crawled around the body 
of one of their number, which had passed into the 
chrysalis state, and mourned over the change. The 
time had come for the butterfly to be born ; but they 
knew nothing of this strange experience that was still 
before them ; and so, when the grub had died up into 
the insect, they bewailed the broken shell, and looked 
sadly at the rupture out of which had gone the higher 
life ; and they said, " O, if one might only be a cat- 
erpillar forever, and never have to die ! " And, while 
they grieved, the rainbow-winged creature floated in 
the glory of the upper heaven, glittering in the sun- 
light, drinking in sights and sounds, and swinging on 
the waving grace of flowers whose very existence had 
been unknown before. 

The higher must always come through the loss and 
death of the lower. Manhood can only be gained by 
the giving up of childhood. If the office and the life- 
work are ever to be reached, the nursery must be left 
behind. The blossom must die before there can be 
fruit. The corn of wheat must decay before the 
stalk and the full ear can come. 

X. — DEATH THE WAY TO PERMANENT UNIONS. 

And then death is the only possible pathway by 
which we can escape that which is saddest about 

97 



Light on the Cloud. 



death, — the separation of friends, — and come to a 
place of perfect and permanent union. 

This separation, after all, is the bitterest drop in the 
cup of death. The unclasping of hands, the saying 
of farewells, the looking upon loved faces no more, 
these are the things that crush us. A mother goes to 
some old bureau-drawer, and takes out one by one, 
and looks over, little dresses, and unused shoes, and 
old playthings ; and if the child is only grown up and 
married, or is away on a visit, or at school, she will 
smile over the memories of the past ; and though a 
little homesickness be at the heart, she looks forward, 
and all her sorrow is lost in the gladness of the anti- 
cipated meeting. But if the little one have died, the 
quaint and happy memories are only material for 
tears ; for she thinks, " I shall never hear those foot- 
falls on the floor ; the arms will never clasp my neck 
again ; those blessed eyes will never look love into 
mine." The difference is all in the length and kind 
of the separation. 

Though oceans be between husband and wife, they 
carry in their hearts an image of the home that will 
be theirs again ; but if one be gone for life, the home 
is lost forever. 

A deathless union, then, is the longing of the heart. 
This perfected society, cemented in the love of God, 
this only can permanently satisfy ; and physical death 
is a blessing because it leads to this. No such union 
as that we desire is possible in this world. Husbands 

93 



Death a Blessing, 



and wives cannot always be together : many a time 
the welfare of the home demands that the father 
work away ; and it is something very rare for grown- 
up brothers and sisters to stay where they can, in the 
most limited sense, keep the old circle unbroken. 
Children grow up around the fireside; and just as they 
are getting to be companions for father and mother, 
one is called away into the great world's business, and 
another is chosen by the electing love of some strong 
man to be the blessed centre of another and distant 

home. 

" To bear, to nur^e, to rear, 
To watch, and then to lose," — 

this is the lot of mothers, the fate of homes. We 
only sip the edge of the cup of our sweet societies, 
and it is withdrawn from our lips. Our hearts long 
for our loved ones scattered all up and down the earth, 
and are very hungry. But we only dream dreams that 
this earth never fulfils. 

But, behold, here comes Death, your dreadest ene- 
my, as you call him ; and if you will only moderate 
your fear enough to look at him, you shall see that he 
bears in his hands the gift of that which you so desire, 
and which shall complete your happiness forever. 
Watch the course of those who die. One by one they 
pass through the cloud ; and what then ? They enter 
the open door of the Father's house on high ; and as 
they go in, a deathless change passes upon each, 
and they become immortal. " No more death, neither 



Light on the Cloud. 



sorrow nor crying ; " " and they shall go no more out 
forever." Gathered here into deathless circles, no 
good-bys are heard again forever. Love's golden ring 
is unbroken, and the songs shall never cease. 
Through death they have passed beyond death ; and 
now life and its fulness remain. 

A little child has been out to an evening party. 
The lamps were bright, and the plays were long, and 
the music sweet, and the table inviting with confections 
and cakes and flowers. By and by the servant comes 
to take the little one home. The child cries at leav- 
ing the beautiful plays ; and as the hall-door opens into 
the street, the chill night air blows on him, and he 
shrinks shivering. He clings closer to the servant, and 
is afraid. He thinks the transition cruel, for the 
street is dark and cheerless. But while cherishing 
these hard thoughts, suddenly the door of home is 
opened at the servant's ring, and discloses the home 
circle, father and mother and brother and sister, all 
seated around the fireside in the brilliantly lighted 
parlors ; and soon, in mother's arms, all the sorrow is 
turned into joy. 

God leads us out into the dark, but only that we 
may go up into his clearer light. 

" There is no death : what seems so is transition. 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
Whose portal we call death." 



GOING TO SLEEP. 

AFTER the day's long playing, 
Tired as tired can be, 
My baby girl comes saying, 
" Papa, will 'ou rock me ? " 

The busy works of daytime 
Allure her now no more ; 

The books and toys of playtime 
Are scattered round the floor. 

Off now with shoe and stocking, 
Off with the crumpled dress : 

She's ready now for rocking, 
For crooning and caress. 

And slowly sinking, sinking, 

The night comes down the skies ; 

While drooping, opening, winking, 
Sleep settles on her eves. 



Light on the Cloud, 



She does not fear the sleeping : 
Out o'er the sea of dark, 

Close held in papa's keeping, 
She drifts in her frail bark. 

No matter for the morrow : 
Enough that papa knows. 

With smile undimmed by sorrow, 
Out in the dark she goes. 

So should it be with dying : 
Drop earthly cares and fears ; 

In Father's arms you're lying ; 
Look up with smiles, not tears. 

You know not of the waking ? 

Be not with fear beguiled ; 
For, when the morning's breaking, 

He'll not forget his child. 



LIFE FROM DEATH. 

HAD one ne'er seen the miracle 
Of May-time from December born, 
Who would have dared the tale to tell 
That 'neath ice-ridges slept the corn ? 

White death lies deep upon the hills, 
And moanings through the tree-tops go ; 

The exulting wind, with breath that chills, 
Shouts triumph to the unresting snow. 

My study window shows me where 

On hard-fought fields the summer died ; 

Its banners now are stripped and bare 
Of even autumn's fading pride. 

Yet, on the gust that surges by, 
I read a pictured promise : soon 

The storm of earth and frown of sky 
Will melt into luxuriant June. 



PART FIFTH. 

WILLING TO- LIVE. 
I. — WILLING TO DIE, OR TO LIVE? 

IT has been a common and popular test of the depth 
and genuineness of a man's religious feeling and 
experience, if he were able heartily to say, " I am 
willing and ready to die ; " but it seems to me a much 
better, grander, and nobler thing to say, " I am willing 
and ready to live." 

II.— EASY TO BE WILLING TO DIE. 

When we look at the condition of masses of men 
during the greater part of human history ; when we 
see the political corruption, the social degradation, 
and the inability of the great crowd of human beings 
to attain any thing like the brightness and beauty and 
greatness of their hopes ; when we see in how large a 
degree ordinary life measured by the standards of 
human ambition has been a failure ; and then when, 
on the other hand, we see how all the eloquence, the 
poetry, and the art of religion have been exhausted in 



Willing to Live. 



setting forth the unspeakable glories of the future, — it 
should not seem so very wonderful a thing that men 
could attain to the ability to say, " I am willing to 
die." For what, according to the popular preaching 
of Christendom, has dying meant? It has meant 
leaving a vale of tears, leaving disappointments, leav- 
ing illusions, unrealities, pains, sorrows, separations, 
leaving every thing that was vile, and going straight to 
the attainment of every thing beautiful and glorious 
and full of felicity. And we know that in those ages 
of Christianity, when the belief in the future was so 
vivid as to make it to the hearts that held it a grand 
and ever-present reality, this willingness to die was 
the commonest of all human experiences. Men were 
more than willing to die ; for in the history of those 
ages of martyrdom and trial we see how men rushed 
gladly, and with songs upon their lips, to the grand 
privilege and honor and glory of martyrdom ; for 
martyrdom meant simply a present heaven and the 
glorious companionship of God and of their Saviour 
Jesus Christ. And this is not a belief that is confined 
to Christianity either. There are millions of Budd- 
hists to-day on the earth who have built their faith on 
the teachings of a man who represented life itself, in 
its totality, as a calamity, and who pointed out to his 
followers, as the highest reward of faithfulness in this 
life, that they should attain by and by to a state where 
all desire, all feeling, all hope, all fear, should be ex- 
tinguished, and they should live, if they lived at all, 



Light on the Cloud. 



a life that to our Occidental thought means little 
less than annihilation. Take the same thing as ap- 
plied to the early believers in Mohammed. What 
did death mean to them ? If they were only faith- 
ful to their short creed, "Allah is Allah, and 
Mohammed is his prophet," and if they were ready to 
join the force that had started out for the conquest of 
the world, rushing on the spears of their foemen 
meant simply the violent breaking open of the doors 
of paradise. It was simply rushing into the presence 
of infinite and endless delights. And to our old 
Scandinavian ancestors substantially the same thing 
was true. He that believed in Odin, and was ready 
to die in battle, leaped at once through the open, 
gaping wound that let out his life, into the hall of 
Valhalla, the Norseman's heaven; and there he en- 
joyed forever the presence and the feastings of his 
companions and of his gods. So I say that being 
ready to die, in the history of the past, and in the 
light of the religions that have been taught men, has 
not been so very difficult a thing, after all. 

III. — WILLING TO LIVE ON CONDITION. 

And the reason, I take it, that many of us to-day 
shrink so in the presence of death is not that we find 
life so pleasing, so satisfactory, not that we are per- 
fectly contented with our condition, and willing to 
dwell in it forever ; but because our belief in the 
future has grown so dim; because heaven, that was 

106 



Willing to Live. 



real, tangible, visible life to those who expected the 
momentary coming of Christ in the clouds, has faded 
away from us until it has become only as the remnant 
of last night's dream ; so that we are not willing to 
die, perhaps, and yet in the real and vital sense of the 
word we are not willing to live either. Of course we 
should all be willing to live, and willing to live indefi- 
nitely, if only we could reach the ideal life we can 
picture to ourselves in our highest thought : if we 
could gain all the glorious hopes that have lured us 
on, if we had wealth, if all our friends were about us, 
if home was never broken up, if we were never wor- 
ried until the very life seemed to be crushed out of us 
by the burdens we have to bear, then it would be easy, 
it would be gladsome and joyous to live, and we would 
not ask any thing better than earthly immortality. If 
only the first flush of the morning could last, with the 
dew on the grass and on the trees, and with the morn- 
ing song of the birds ! But the morning fades out, and 
we find ourselves sweltering in the midst of the heat, 
and crushed under the burdens of the day. If only 
the first beautiful illusions of youth could continue on 
into middle life ; if we could only see all the world as 
fair, and believe all men and women as gentle and true 
and noble and heroic, as they seem to our childhood ! 
But youth passes away, and we find ourselves battling 
hand-to-hand in the midst of the struggles and neces- 
sities of our later life, gradually losing faith in this 
man, and faith in that, and perhaps coming to the 
io 7 



Light on the Cloud, 



conclusion that even that which seemed to us angelic 
in women has about it a very earthly taint and touch 
of selfishness and passion like that which we find in 
the breasts of our fellow-men. These are the things, 
I say, that make it hard for us to accept the realities of 
our later life, and to be content and satisfied in them. 

IV. — HARD THINGS OF LIFE. 

I propose, then, in following out this line of thought, 
to bring to your minds a few of the things that make 
it hard for us to be reconciled to the actual conditions 
of our life. I shall perhaps dwell somewhat on their 
darker side, shading them not as they appear to my 
reason, but as they come to us, and make themselves 
seen and felt, in the midst of the struggles and diffi- 
culties of our career. 

Consider, then, a few of the things that make it 
hard for us to be reconciled to life. You will under- 
stand, as I have said, that I am not speaking of being 
willing to live after the fashion we could picture and 
paint in our imaginations ; but how many of us are 
willing to grapple with the problems, the facts, the 
sorrows and trials, just as they come to us day by 
day, manfully, contentedly, faithfully working out the 
problem, fighting through the fight unto the end, and 
counting life as it comes in this way a good and grand 
and noble thing, to be taken thankfully, to be kept 
and carried patiently, to be given up contentedly when 
called for at the end ? 

108 



Willing to Live. 



V. — MYSTERY MAKES IT HARD. 

What, then, are some of the things ? First, there 
are the limitations of our life, limitations of knowl- 
edge, those things that make the universe and life 
here on the earth seem such an overwhelming mys- 
tery to us. This does not mean any thing to children, 
and does not apply to them. Writing these thoughts, 
I am hardly writing for them. The universe is all 
clear to the child before he has asked any questions. 
He takes every thing for granted, lives in the love and 
light of his home, and is contented in the midst of 
these. But the progress of life with us is just like 
the progress of the sunrise. When, on some foggy 
morning, we look out, and can only see a few feet 
from the house, the world seems small and easily 
comprehended to us. As the fog lifts, and the light 
comes in, we learn, to be sure, something more than 
we knew before. Along with this widening of the 
range of that which we can see and understand, we 
are continually impressed with the sense that the 
circle of this mystery, of that which we cannot see 
and cannot know, is perpetually widening, until, as 
the fog fades off to the horizon, the horizon itself 
seems narrow and cramped, and we are lost in the 
infinity of the universe. Or as a person climbing a 
mountain-side : he can see, before he starts, the side of 
the mountain, and the little bit of landscape that is about 
him ; but, as he climbs, the landscape broadens and 



Light on the Cloud. 



widens on every hand; he sees more and more, — here 
a river, there a bit of ocean or a clump of trees, and 
away off to the edge of the sea. But along with this 
knowledge of his surroundings comes that other 
knowledge, that beyond any thing that he can see or 
measure there is the illimitable and the unknown. 

It sometimes seems to me, and I suppose it seems 
so to every thoughtful mind, as though study, thinking 
and searching after the meaning of things, were 
utterly vain, so little can we discover, so little of what 
we do discover do we really comprehend. There is 
nothing anywhere about us that we can understand. 
I watched a little cloud of dust floating in the street 
one day; and I thought and felt that every single 
grain in that cloud had about it a touch of the 
infinity that makes the universe darkness, so that 
there was something even there that man can never 
fathom or comprehend. And the grandest think- 
ers of the world, when they have studied and thought, 
and learned all they could learn, have at last been 
compelled to say as did Newton, in those oft-quoted 
words, " I stand like a child on the shore of an 
infinite ocean, having gathered a few bright and 
beautiful pebbles in my hand." 

The popular feeling, condensed into a phrase (for I 
do not think it was thought only, but the speaker felt 
the oppression of it), was expressed to me one day, 
as I was talking with a friend. " It seems to me," said 
he, "as though all this life was nothing. What are 



Willing to Live. 



we here for ? What does it all mean ? Where will 
it all end ? We know not where we came from ; we 
know not what we are ; we cannot define the meaning 
of life, even ; we know not where we are going ; or, 
at least, there is room for so much doubt or question 
on all of these points, that sometimes the doubts will 
get the better of our faith, and we seem wrapped in 
clouds that we can never dissipate or scatter." This 
mystery of life, then, comes upon us, and belittles the 
meaning of our lives, and takes heart and hope out of 



VI.— UNSATISFIED LOVES. 

And then there is the limitation of our affections. 
When I was a little child, I did as every child does : I 
trusted and loved everybody without a question. But 
do we not all know that there comes a sad and serious 
limitation to the boundlessness of this trusting love as 
we go on ? Have you never felt a pang like that which 
came to my heart when I waked up to the discovery that 
even father and mother were not perfect? It was 
simply the necessary discovery that we must make in 
regard to everybody who is human ; but, having wor- 
shipped and loved them, I shall never forget the pang 
of pain that came to me when I had to criticise those 
whom I had so deeply loved. And, as the younger 
boy at home, I almost worshipped my older brothers ; 
and on awaking from the illusion, — for it was an illu- 
sion, though they are grand and noble as any men I 



Light on the Cloud. 



know, — on awaking from the illusion that they were 
something heroic and grand beyond common humanity, 
this driving of the trusting love back upon the heart 
awoke such dissatisfaction with life as I shall never be 
able to forget. 

And then we have discovered it in more intimate 
relations. If we have not waked up to find that those 
nearest and dearest to us cannot fill the perfect ideal 
that reaches out after the divine, we must at least be 
conscious that those near and dear have waked up to 
the consciousness that we cannot fill this ideal; and 
so the love becomes limited, and driven in on itself, 
until we become discouraged and dissatisfied with the 
meaning and the beauty of life. 

And then there is the limitation of the possibilities 
of our attainments in the work of life. How little and 
poor and mean life seems to us sometimes when we 
stand at the farther end of it, and look back ! What 
have we done ? If one of us dies, we simply drop out, 
and are forgotten ; and that is the end. What we have 
accomplished seems to have wrought so little change 
in the on-going of the world's affairs ! We have been 
able to do so little to add to the knowledge of men, to 
add to their culture, to add to their enlightenment, to 
their improvement, to their uplifting, that all we are 
doing seems vain; and our arm is unnerved and drops 
useless at our side. 



Willing to Live, 



VII. — LIFE'S BURDENS. 

And then there come and press upon us the ordi- 
nary, common burdens of life. I shall not speak of 
any thing striking or extraordinary in this respect : I 
simply wish to call home to your thought and feeling 
those things which press upon you all. We are bur- 
dened, most of U3, with things that we could not 
throw off if we would, and that seem to make life in its 
ordinary manifestations to us something hard to bear. 
There are those who are burdened with an inherited 
tendency to sadness and melancholy. What does it 
mean ? Something not their fault. The skeleton-hand 
of some ancestor, perhaps remote by many genera- 
tions, reaches out of the distant grave, and lays this 
burden of melancholy on a man's soul ; and he must 
carry it through life. If he will, he cannot throw it 
off. It blackens the heavens, fills the soul with doubt, 
puts the light out in the sky, and makes us question 
whether there is any God, or any love, or any order 
in it all. 

And then there is the burden of inherited disease. 
Many of us wake up as we come into our earlier man- 
hood or womanhood, and find that we are carrying a 
weight of which we shall never be able to rid our- 
selves, — a weight that makes life many times seem to 
us but misery, useless, valueless. 

Then there is the burden of our daily business 
cares. How many of you at night come from the 
113 



Light on the Cloud. 



business of the day, feeling that you are oppressed, . 
worried, troubled, beyond any thing you could utter 
or express, by the crushing burden of your business, 
which you cannot throw off, and yet which it seems 
to you sometimes you can no longer carry ! And 
then these mothers, burdened with the commonest 
cares of the household, as to what they shall do 
with the children, how they shall teach them, with the 
endless round of little petty cares that seem never to 
have an end, and yet that seem to wear the very life 
and heart and hope out of you all ! 

And then there is a burden that none of us have 
ever seen, and yet it is one that we carry, and one that 
perhaps crushes us more than any of these ; and that 
is the burden of the future, — anxiety for the morrow. 
I take it that most of us would get through to-day 
very well if we were absolutely sure that to-morrow 
would be bright. But, however bright to-day may be, 
we see the cloud to-morrow ; and if it is very dark 
to-day, the cloud to-morrow only deepens. And so 
we carry that which, as I have said, we have never 
seen, that which we have never heard, that which we 
have never touched, and that which we never shall 
see, never shall hear, never shall touch, the burden of 
to-morrow, crushing us down, and taking the heart 
and hope out of life. 



WiHing to Live. 



VIII. — LOSSES MAKE US UNRECONCILED TO LIFE. 

And then, once more, there are the losses that make 
us unreconciled to life, — the loss of property, the loss 
of station, the loss of social power or influence, the 
loss of the hopes of our youth, that clustered about 
us so brightly, that we have reached after and sought 
so long, and that we have so utterly failed to attain. 
And then there are the losses that seem harder still, — 
the losses of friends. I can hardly speak of these 
without touching you every one, for there is no home 
that has not some time been shadowed, there is no 
heart that does not cherish the memory of a face that 
has faded, of a voice that they shall hear no more. 
Many a woman from whose side has been stricken the 
strong arm on which she leaned feels that she cannot 
bear her life any longer. Life has no meaning : its 
heart, its hope, its impulse, have all been taken away ; 
and she simply drags through dark day after day, 
wishing for the end ; not only willing to die, lo7iging 
to die, if only she could gain back the one who stood 
by her side, and on whom she leaned for strength, 
and who has faded from her arms. And how many 
are there, mothers and fathers, who look upon empty 
cradles, who listen for footsteps that they cannot hear, 
who see in their dreams, or in the musing hour of 
twilight, as they sit and think, the faces that once 
clustered or played about their feet, that they will 
never see in life again ! These things come to them, 

"5 



Light on the Cloud. 



and take the very meaning out of life, until death 
itself seems to be a blessing, and life something hard 
to bear ; and we are ready to ask the question which 
Tennyson asks in the opening lines of his " Two 
Voices," — 

" A still small voice spake unto me, — 
' Thou art so full of misery, 
Were it not better not to be ? ' " 

These, then, simply as hints, — I have not intended to 
discuss them, for they need no discussion, but simply 
to bring them to your thought, — hints of those things 
that make it hard for us to say, " I am willing to live, 
right here, to-day, in my circumstances ; ready to take 
up my burden, to carry my load, to do my work, to 
wait God's time." 

IX. — LIFE IS WORTH LIVING. 

And now I propose, as an offset to this, to consider 
some of the reasons why we ought to be reconciled 
to just this kind of life ; for when we say we are 
willing to live, we mean willing to take life as it is, 
life as it practically comes to us. If we do not mean 
this, we do not mean any thing ; for this is what life is, 
to the majority of men. 

X. — TRUST RECONCILES TO LIFE. 

First, there ought to come to sustain and strengthen 
and lift us up, and there must come, if we are to live 
life grandly, this underlying faith, — faith in the good- 



Willing to Live. 



ness, in the power, in the wisdom, that is at the heart 
of things, that which religion calls " God," that which 
we in the earnestness and simplicity of our hearts 
call "our Father in heaven." If, as is supposed, 
Paul wrote that he was content in whatsoever state 
he might be, it is very significant for us to notice the 
career through which he passed in his earthly ex- 
perience, and by which he learned to be content." 
It is not something that comes to us at first ; it is 
not something born with us. This contentment with 
the facts, the darkness, the mystery, the hardness 
of life, comes to us as the result of learning, if it 
comes at all ; and it comes generally well along in 
life. Paul, the petted son of wealthy parents ; Paul, 
the scholar, learned in the wisdom of his time; Paul, 
the orator ; Paul, the leader of the faction that per- 
secuted the early church; this Paul, himself the per- 
secuted and the outcast, driven to think in the wilder- 
ness, and then, as he thought, compelled to take up a 
ministry that made him an outcast from his country, 
and that forbade him to have a home ; Paul, who was 
scourged, who was beaten with rods, who was ship- 
wrecked, who was in danger of wild beasts, in perils 
of robbers, in perils by his own countrymen, in perils 
among strangers, in perils among false brethren ; 
Paul, travelling night and day ; Paul, without father 
or mother, brother or sister, in his later life ; Paul, 
without friends, except the few that he gathered about 
him to help him in his labor ; Paul, despised and sus- 



Light on the Cloud. 



pected in the midst of the very churches which he 
founded ; Paul, whose life was all struggle and tem- 
pest, from first to last, — he it is who says, " I have 
learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be 
content." And he learned this very much as we must 
learn it ; for though Paul would put the definition of 
his faith, of his belief, and of his trust, in different 
words from those that we would utter to-day, yet the 
underlying principles on which he rested, and on 
which we must rest, are substantially the same. He 
had this of which I speak, — this grand anchor of 
faith in the goodness, the love, and the wisdom of 
God ; and so must we have. To-day, perhaps, my 
eyes are dropping tears, my heart is heavy with the 
burden of grief, and thick darkness is all about me. 
No matter ! If there be any thing in religion, if there 
be any God, I must believe that there is an outcome 
that shall justify it all. And by this faith in God I 
do not mean an unreasoning acceptance of a dogma : 
nothing of the kind. Any faith that is real and true 
and living bases itself in, stands upon, and must grow 
out of, the experience of the world ; and the experi- 
ence of the world has given us just such a God to 
trust. There is, as Matthew Arnold has expressed it, 
apparent all through the history of the world " a power 
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." There 
is nothing clearer in the history of the world thus 
far than that there is a ruling, conquering power of 
right in the affairs of humanity. Those kings, those 



Willing to Live. 



generals, those factions, those mighty men, all those 
human forces that have set themselves against this 
invincible power of right, have been dashed in pieces 
as waves are driven back in an angry foam when they 
smite against the cliffs on the shore of the sea. 
Only those things have stood that have been built 
upon this impregnable foundation of everlasting 
righteousness and truth. Why, the very fact that 
there is any order at all in the universe is proof 
that there is a power that makes for order, that is 
supreme over all the chaotic and disturbing forces 
of the world. When, on some cold morning, I see 
the steam gathering upon the window, and see those 
little particles of mist shaping themselves into the 
beautiful crystalline forms that they always take on 
under those circumstances, do I not know that there 
is a power of order at the heart of it all, that creates 
these beautiful forms ? When I see a rootlet in the 
soil, and a little stem spring up from it, and grow to 
a tree, gathering to itself from the earth beneath, from 
the air around, from the rains, and from the sunshine 
above, all the scattered and disorganized portions of 
its surroundings that go to make up the beautiful 
order and the growth of the tree, do I not know that 
in that growth and in that development is something 
stronger than disorganization and death ? So, when I 
see in society, among the affairs of men, law, order, 
right, and truth supreme, as the years go by, ruling 
and regulating all the turbulent powers beneath them, 



Light on the Cloud. 



coming out regnant and king at last, do I not know 
that the power that made and rules and works in 
society is a power working for order and righteous- 
ness and truth ? 

And so, out of the experience of the world, out of 
observing the affairs and facts of humanity, we may 
draw this one conclusion, that no argument can over- 
throw, and that no contrary experience or discovery 
can touch or weaken, this faith in the power and the 
love and the wisdom that guide the affairs of men. 
And I know that they guide the affairs of humanity, 
because they guide my affairs. Perhaps I would not 
express my belief in what is ordinarily called particu- 
lar providences, and say that God changes his law and 
all his affairs for the sake of bringing about just the 
particular thing that I care for, that I desire ; but I 
cannot believe in any God who rules the universe, who 
does not rule the particles of which the universe is 
composed. God does not rule all the stars in space, 
and neglect this particular earth on which we live, 
one of the stars that he rules as a part of the 
universe. God does not govern the affairs of this 
great globe on which we stand, and neglect the leaves 
of the trees, and the dust-particles that float as motes 
in the sunbeam. The same mighty and comprehen- 
sive law which holds the universe in its order is 
minute enough to grasp the dust-particle that floats in 
the air ; and the totality of order could not result ex- 
cept for the minuteness of it. And so the providence 



Willing to Live. 



of God, that cares for the universe as a whole, that 
takes it at the beginning, and holds it to the consum- 
mation that we cannot see or know, that we can only 
dimly guess, — this same mighty, all-grasping order of 
God's providence considers my affairs. Not simply 
nations, not simply cities, not simply families, but you 
and me, the leaf on the tree, the bird that sings on the 
bough, the flower that springs out of the sod, — these 
are a part of this wisdom and love and order that we 
call the character and the providence of God. 

XI. —CONTENT WITH EACH STEP AS A STEP. 

Then there is another reason for our being con- 
tented. I am not contented with what I am to-day as 
a finality : I am contented with it simply as a provis- 
ional thing that leads on to something better. When 
a man is painting a picture, and he gets simply his out- 
line sketched, he is not contented : the picture is not 
done ; but he is contented with the work so far. 
When a man is making a statue, and has it rudely 
blocked out, or only an arm or a foot, or the head 
finished and brought into shape, he is satisfied so 
far with what he has done, as leading to something 
else. I climbed Bunker Hill Monument some years 
ago. When I reached the fiftieth step, I had not 
reached the end, and was not satisfied. I was going 
to the top ; but I was satisfied with the fiftieth step 
as the fiftieth step, as leading on to the hundredth and 
the two-hundredth. And so we must learn to be con- 



Lizht on the Cloud. 



tented with the joys, and contented to take the sorrows 
of to-day, and live nobly and faithfully now, looking 
toward something that is to come. 

XII. — SUCCESS CONSISTENT WITH LOSS. 

One thought more, and this my last. We must 
remember, that though we gain not the grand things of 
life that we strive after, if we live nobly in the midst 
of these affairs that God has appointed as our portion, 
we shall have gained the grand end and aim of life. 
What does life mean ? Success does not mean that 
you live in a fine house, on a fine street, and have 
horses prancing at your door ; that you are able to 
command means for accomplishing whatever you 
wish. Success does not mean that you have attained 
to a certain office that you have striven after, that you 
have accomplished a certain work, that you have* 
written a certain book, that you have done a certain 
deed. Suppose we pursue truth all our life long, and 
feel at the end that we have only gained the discipline 
that comes through the search after truth : which is 
worth the most, — the manhood, the character we 
have developed, that we have built up, or the thing 
that we have striven after ? A man paints a beautiful 
picture ; and the moment it is finished his house is 
burned, and the picture with it. The man has devel- 
oped himself as an artist in the process of his labor ; 
and this artistic faculty and power have become a part 
of himself, and he carries them with him forever. He 



Willing to Live, 



may lose the outside work that is done ; but the qual- 
ity, the skill, those things which go to make the es- 
sence and the soul of his work, — these have become 
part of his own soul: he carries them with him forever. 
If I have devoted my life to some philanthropic labor, 
I may not have succeeded in accomplishing my pur- 
pose ; but all that there was beautiful and glorious in 
that work of philanthropy I have wrought into the 
fibre of my own being : it has become part of myself, 
and I carry with me forever the result of that labor. 
So, if I have sought for truth, I may not have found 
it ; but the discipline, the culture, the awakening of the 
brain, the devotion of the heart, the fixed resolve, the 
will, — these things have become a part of myself ; so 
that, though I have not the truth, I am something 
better than the man who has the truth. I am the 
truth-seeker, the truth-lover, devoted to truth, follow- 
ing it to the world's end. 

We have lost the toys and the plays of our child- 
hood ; but the childhood is not lost, nor was it useless. 
The plays, the diversions, the labors and the efforts 
of childhood, have been wrought into our make-up as 
men. So we may lose the things we strive after to- 
day, and life may seem meaningless to us, useless and 
worthless in our disappointment and sadness, when we 
reach after things we desire, and do not gain them ; 
but if we are only faithful in the conditions in which 
we are placed, bearing patiently the burdens, taking 
the heartache if it comes, being faithful in the midst 
123 



Light on the Cloud. 



of the conditions where God has placed us, living 
nobly to ourselves and our fellow-men, we shall have 
built up for ourselves characters of divine finish, di- 
vine beauty, and divine glory ; and these are better 
than to get on to-day, for this means becoming divine. 

My boyhood chased the butterfly, 

Or, when the shower was gone, 
Sought treasures at the rainbow's end, 

That lured me wandering on. 
I caught nor bow nor butterfly, 

Though eagerly I ran. 
But in the chase I found myself, 

And grew to be a man. 

In later years I've chased the good, 

The beautiful and true : 
Mirage-like forms, which take not shape, 

They flit as I pursue. 
But, while the endless chase I ran, 

I grew in life divine : 
I missed the ideals that I sought, 

But God himself is mine. 
124 



AT TWILIGHT TIME. 



A 1 



T twilight time, 
The musing hour, 
When the past re-lives, 
And we feel the power 
Of the subtle spell that awhile calls back 
The treasures we've lost along life's track, - 

We sit and dream, 

Till the present falls 
In the shadow that rises 
And sinks on the walls ; 
And the old time only is living and true, 
And dreams are the things that now we do. 

Then on the stairs 

Is the patter and fall 
Of the little feet 

That ran through the hall ; 
We hear the old shout of frolic and glee ; 
And again the lost darling is on our knee. 

125 



Light on the Cloud, 



The little shoes, 

The doll, the cart, 
The half -worn frock, — 
O ! who would part 
With these treasured trifles that hold the key- 
To the sacred chamber of memory? 

The tears may fall, 

The heart may swell; 
The loss is bitter : 
Yet who can tell 
From a mother's love, what treasure vast 
Could buy these waifs of a shipwrecked past ? 

Our human love 
Is but a ray : 
In God's great heart 
Is full-orbed day : 
If the toys of our children we cherish and bless, 
Is God's love for his little ones smaller or less ? 
126 



MEMORY. 

O MEMORY ! the cup of joy 
Thou holdest full to happy lips ! 
But bitter waters Sorrow sips 
From goblets she would fain destroy. 

For Memory is but torture now : 

She makes the dead past live again, 
In one wild whirl of heart and brain, 

While o'er the lost my head I bow. 

I look through mists of tears, and see 

My blessed, bright-haired boy once more ; 
I hear his footfall on the floor, 

He's running through the hall for me. 

I see his playthings scattered round ; 

I hear his merry laugh ring out ; 

I start, and listen for his shout, — 
A mother's heaven was in that sound. 



Light on the Cloud. 



I think of all he was to me ; 

I dream of all he would have been : 

0, had I not such glory seen, 
I had escaped this agony ! 

O, tear the shape from out my heart, 

And let it be I had no boy ! 

This memory of former joy 
Is present sorrow's bitterest part. 

And yet, and yet, — no, let me keep 

The thought of bliss that once was mine : 
This sacred grief my life shall twine, 

And live upon the tears I weep. 

Perhaps 'twill blossom out some day, 

With flowers of hope ; for heaven's sunrise 
May follow this earth's sunset; and my eyes 

May smile once more to meet its gladdening ray. 
128 



PART SIXTH. 



HAPPINESS. 
I. — THE PLEASANT WAY. 

FROM the small number of persons at any special 
time in the world, who are earnestly and heartily 
seeking to walk in the ways of wisdom, we must con- 
clude that there are practically very few people who 
believe the words of the proverb. 1 Wisdom, in the 
Bible, stands for a practical recognition of the laws of 
righteousness and truth, for the way of God ; but the 
common belief of men, as represented in the promi- 
nent religions of the world, seems to be that pleasure 
is found almost anywhere else rather than here. 
The word " pleasure " is very rarely connected with 
doing right in this life. We say it is pleasant to do 
wrong ; and the popular speakers and the poets have 
represented the flowery paths of sin, and, in contrast 
with those, have pictured the narrow, steep, and rug- 
ged way, the way of virtue, — a way that is rough, so 
that the feet bleed in trying to climb ; a way that is so 

1 " Her ways are ways of pleasantness.'' 



Light on the Cloud. 



steep that one becomes quickly weary in the struggle 
to go higher and higher day by day; a way that is 
rocky, where no flowers bloom, and where they can 
hope for peace and rest only in some distant future. 
But the word of the proverb completely contradicts 
this supposition. It does not say that the end of 
wisdom is pleasantness : it says, " Her ways are . . . 
pleasantness." 

II. — RELIGION HAS BEEN GLOOMY. 

The ordinary conception of the popular religions of 
the world has been one that has thrown a gloom over 
the present life. It has been taught that it was sinful 
to enjoy one's self ; that, at any rate, even if there 
was no actual sin in the thrilling sensations of pleas- 
ure, they were yet dangerous ; that we were likely 
to be insnared and entrapped in the pleasant things 
that are about us, so as to lose sight of, and cease 
to desire those things that are higher and better : 
thus the typical saint of the past is precisely the 
opposite of the world's conception of a happy man. 
The saints that are represented in the writings and 
pictures of the world are all men with severe faces, 
the men that fast, the men that deny themselves, 
the men that suffer, the men that withdraw from 
the ordinary pursuits and pleasures of life, that live 
in wildernesses and caves, that thrust away from 
them the joys and pleasures of domestic life, of 
society, of art, of the drama, of literature, and all the 
130 



Happiness. 



things that make up the rushing life of the com- 
posite world. These, I say, are the typical saints 
of the religions of the world. And I grant that this 
conception is a logical and correct one, if it be true 
that man has fallen, if it be true that the world is 
accursed, if it be true that humanity lies under 
the wrath of an angry God, if it be true that the 
one grand problem of life is to escape the present 
conditions of this world, and to attain unto some- 
thing else by and by. It seems to me, then, that 
those men who believe in the fact of the curse and 
the fall, those who believe in the wrath of an angry 
God, those who believe in the danger of absorption 
in this life, and that the one thing to do is to gain 
a heaven hereafter, — I say, it seems to me that the 
men who believe this are utterly inconsistent with 
their creed when they teach men to be happy and 
enjoy themselves. It may be all right to be happy, 
and wear a smiling face, to take the good things of 
this life as they come, and rejoice in the kindness 
and mercy of our heavenly Father ; but if a ship 
has sprung a leak, and the passengers are wait- 
ing for the time when they shall most assuredly go 
under and be overwhelmed by the waves, and if there 
is one possible way of escape, although it may be right 
to sing songs, and play on musical instruments, to 
dance, and enjoy one's self, yet that man is something 
less than human, who, in the presence of possible 
danger to one single human being, can relax the 



Light on the Cloud. 



utmost intensity of his effort to provide for that 
person a place of safety, while he stops to enjoy 
the delicious thrill of his nerves, drink in the beau- 
tiful sights and sounds about him, and make himself 
comfortable and happy. So it seems to me that those 
men who really believe that none can be saved except 
in their special way, — it seems to me, I say, that these 
men, by as much as they love God, and hold relations 
of human sympathy and feeling toward their fellow- 
men, ought to give themselves heartily, wholly, and 
eternally to this one work of salvation: not that it is 
wrong to smile, not that it is wrong to be happy ; but 
there is no time for smiles, no time to be happy. 

III. — MAN NATURALLY SEEKS HAPPINESS. 

And yet, in the face of these considerations, there 
are one or two facts that we must recognize ; and 
one is, that the human heart is instinctively moved, 
perpetually thrust forward, in search for happiness. 
Whence came this instinct of search ? Is it from God, 
or from beneath ? It is, at any rate, a part of the 
healthy, natural life of any human soul. An instinc- 
tive, universal, undying thirst for joy is a part cf 
humanity. 

IV. — AN UNHAPPY UNIVERSE A FAILURE. 

And there is another consideration. By the very 
conditions of the moral nature with which we are 
endowed, and that make us what we are, we are com- 
132 

% 



Happiness. 



pelled to believe that if there is justice, if there is 
righteousness, if there is love, on the throne of the 
universe, the grand end and outcome of the universe 
must be one of joy. of happiness, of peace. I hesi- 
tate not to say. and I believe that the sense of justice 
of the world will by and by echo the saying, that if it 
should be that one, the least and most despised hu- 
man being, was to remain in some outcast corner of 
the universe, sad. burdened, stricken, woeful, wailing, 
forever, then the sum total of 'the joy and the songs 
of heaven, all the thrilling paeans of triumph of those 
who have fought and come off victors, all the ten 
million times ten million of joyful souls in heaven, 
would not take away from the fact that the universe, 
as a whole, was a failure, a discredit to its original, 
a disgrace forever blotching the throne of the Al- 
mighty. For we must feel that, however essential 
it be that the world be right, — and it must be right 
because right is the way to God. to blessedness, and to 
peace, — yet. if making the whole universe right made 
us all miserable, our very conception of morals would 
have to be reversed : for we cannot possibly conceive 
that the outcome of righteousness, of truth, of divine 
thinking and divine living, can be any thing else than 
what we are compelled to conceive as divine blessed- 
ness and divine joy. 

133 



Light on the Cloud. 



V. — PLEASURE IS LIFE, AND PAIN IS DEATH. 

There are several considerations that go to support 
and strengthen this statement of ours, that happiness 
is rightfully an object of human search. It is based 
in the physical facts of our nature. It is now 
distinctly ascertained as a scientific fact, — perhaps 
few have ever thought of it in that way, not hav- 
ing had it presented to them ; but it is distinctly 
ascertained to be a fact of man's bodily, mental, and 
spiritual life, — that those sensations which give us 
pleasure really do add to the sum-total of life ; that 
every painful or disagreeable sensation takes some- 
thing away from the fund of man's power and the 
duration of his being. So that the old proverb was 
wiser than we were perhaps aware, when it declared 
that " every sigh drives a nail into a man's coffin, and 
every laugh draws one out." It is not simply that 
men are happier, that they rejoice more, that they 
look and feel well ; but as a physical fact, touching 
health and touching life, it is true. You have experi- 
enced it a thousand times, perhaps, without stopping 
to interpret it. You get up some morning, and per- 
haps it is cloudy ; the day is disagreeable ; you feel 
the effects of your surroundings : and so your own 
sky is cloudy, and your disposition is full of the east 
wind. Every thing goes wrong with you, as you say, 
on such a day as that. It is hard for you to do any 
thing. You feel depressed. Your heart is heavy ; 
134 



Happiness. 



your pulse beats slowly and without any force ; you 
are tired and weary. It is on such a morning as this, 
if you be a husband, that the wife is glad when break- 
fast is over, and you are gone to business. It is a 
morning when the cat and the dog, if they are wise, 
keep out of your way, — a morning when every thing 
is disagreeable and hard to you. But perhaps, in 
the midst of all this, there comes in some friend, and 
his talk is cheery ; he tells some anecdote that starts 
the pulsations of life ; or you hear a piece of good 
news, — some project in which you were intensely 
interested has succeeded; something has happened 
to start in you a pulsation and thrill of joy : and there 
is really an addition, instantly, to the sum-total of your 
physical life. The eye brightens, the face flushes, 
the pulse is stronger and more rapid, the heart throbs 
with a more manful beat, and the whole man is 
lifted up to a higher plane. You can think better ; 
you can do more ; you are more of a man in every 
way ; and it is simply the pleasurable sensation that 
has created this difference, and changed your apparent 
oppression into strength and vigor. 

Perhaps you remember that simple story (I tell it 
because it is so simple, and because it so aptly illus- 
trates my point) of the professor who took some small 
children out into the woods for an afternoon frolic and 
study ; and when they were two or three miles from 
home, he found that some of the smaller ones espe- 
cially had grown so weary that it was really a serious 

i3S 



Light on the Cloud. 



problem with him as to whether he would be able to 
get them home. At last the childish device occurred 
to him, of sending them off into the woods to cut 
branches of willow, that they might ride them, child- 
fashion, as their horses, toward home. The idea 
struck their childish fancy ; a sense of joy came over 
them ; they were playing then, working no longer ; 
and having mounted their horses, without one thought 
of weariness or care, they found themselves speedily 
at their own doorways again. Now, this was not 
fancy. This change from sadness, from depression, 
from physical weakness and inability, to strength and 
joyous activity, was simply a change from a painful 
sensation to a pleasurable one. It indicates a power 
which we find in every human heart, in every human 
body and soul. 

VI. — HAPPINESS ESSENTIAL TO BEST WORK. 

And then it is a fact that is testified to by the 
experience and observation of mankind, that the best 
work of the world is done by those who are happy 
in their work ; that is, happiness is an element of all 
successful work. If you attempt to do something that 
is disagreeable to you, that you do not like, not only 
is it hard to do, but you are certain not to do it well. 
We speak sometimes of the necessity of a man's 
"following the bent of his genius " if he would be 
successful. What does that mean ? It means simply 
this : that it is a physiological fact, a fact of human 
136 



Happiness. 



nature, we are so constituted that the exercise of any 
healthful faculty is a pleasure to us. We are capable 
of doing a hundred different things, perhaps ; and if 
we are capable of doing every one of those hundred 
things with equal pleasure, that is, if we are just as 
much drawn to this one as to that, or to one as to the 
other, then there is no bent to our nature ; there is no 
special reason why we should follow one pursuit more 
than another. But most of us are so constituted that 
we lean over, we bend, in some certain direction ; 
that is, the faculties of our being reach out more 
forcibly, more strongly, in some one direction than 
they do in another. So one man wants to be a 
banker, another a lawyer, another a minister, another 
a farmer, another a mechanic, another a musician, 
another an artist ; that is, the preponderance of their 
faculties bends in one way or another. And it is the 
men who follow their bent, who do the things they 
like, — who, in other words, pursue pleasure in their 
work, — these are the men who have done the finest 
and grandest work of the world. Shakspere could 
not have succeeded so well in any thing else but as a 
poet and dramatist. Compel Milton to have turned 
artist, and he would have been a third or fourth rate 
one. So take an artist, and attempt to make a poet of 
him, and you will fail. Each one follows the bent 
of his faculties, which is in the line of his happiness 
and joy. 

137 



Light on the Cloud. 



VII. — THIS THE ROOT OF CIVILIZATION. 

Then there is another truth, wider and broader even 
than this, if it be possible. It is this thirst for pleas- 
ure, this thirst for gratification, which is the very root 
of the world's civilization. I care not what it is, — 
from the clearing of the forest in primitive times or 
away out on the frontiers, to the putting in their 
places, in the Exposition at Philadelphia to-day, of 
the finest and highest results of human activity : the 
principle I have laid down will hold true everywhere, 
that this thirst for pleasure, this desire for happiness, 
is the root of the world's achievements and civiliza- 
tion. Why does a man go out into the wilderness, 
cut down trees, break up the soil, start a new settle- 
ment, and build around him a home ? What is it that 
is the mainspring of this activity ? What is the power 
that levels trees, that digs up their roots from the 
soil ? What is it that breaks the ground, plants the 
seed, lays out the garden-plat, builds the home, and 
beautifies it all within ? It is simply the desire to 
satisfy the social nature of man : it is love, and seek- 
ing for the gratification of love. This one principle 
has been the mainspring and the motive force of it all. 

And so in society, in government, what is the main- 
spring of the governmental life of the world ? It is 
simply the earnest desire of man to search for happi- 
ness, that arranges the broadest and deepest founda- 
tions and conditions for the stability and permanence 

123 



Happiness. 



of that happiness. You remember the opening words 
of the immortal Declaration, that comes to us so 
vividly in our centennial year. What did Jefferson 
say was man's inalienable right ? "The right to life, 
liberty, and " — this is the culmination, this the thing 
for which life and liberty themselves are desirable — 
" the pursuit of happiness" This is the end and 
object of it all, — the end for which governments are 
established; for justice itself, and even our police 
regulations, and all the darker and more horrible sides 
of government, such as is often illustrated by the 
hanging of some poor wretch, — all these things, 
have their root in this desire for happiness ; for 
society, even at the cost of quenching the life and 
peace and joy of one individual, seeks the happi- 
ness of those defenceless ones who else would be 
destroyed. So the principle is the same, and runs 
through it all. 

VIII. — OUR RIGHT TO HAPPINESS LIMITED. 

But there are one or two limitations to the rightful- 
ness of this search after happiness, on the part of 
mankind ; and the most important of them all grows 
out of the fact that we live in society. If I alone 
existed in the State of Massachusetts, then I would 
have a perfect right to be grasping and greedy ; to 
take into my arms, if I could, every thing in the way 
of the resources and powers and opportunities and 
pleasures that that State could afford. But I am not 
139 



Light on the Cloud. 



alone. If there were only two of us, then I might 
take one-half that the State afforded. But the State is 
thronged with a busy population. Therefore this right 
of search for happiness is limited by this one principle. 
You and I may search for it anywhere, everywhere, 
by any lawful means, so long as we do not trench upon 
the right to search for happiness of some other human 
being. " Human," did I say ? I will broaden it. I will 
not confine it to humanity. I believe that on the part 
of the civilized world, as yet, there is only partially 
developed the respect that we ought to have for the 
rights of other sentient life. You have no right, for 
the sake of pleasure, to trench upon the life and 
happiness of your horse, your dog, or your cat. You 
have no right to trench on the life and happiness of 
the birds in the trees, or the wild beasts in the forest ; 
and I think somewhat less of that man than I other- 
wise should, who is capable of enjoying what is called 
"sportsmanship " at the expense of the life and pleas- 
ure of others, and with no higher object in it than 
simply his personal enjoyment. I believe Cowper 
gave utterance to a grand truth, which will some time 
be recognized as a universal principle of morality, 
when he said, — 

" I would not enter on my list cf friends 
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, 
Yet wanting sensibility) the man 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

The worm has rights, according to the measure of its 
140 



Happiness. 



life and ability, the same as you. You have a right 
to quench those rights at the bidding of some higher 
principle or truth, but not at the bidding of your own 
caprice, or for the sake of your own passing pleasure. 
I say, then, that this principle finds its limitation 
chiefly in the relations that we sustain to our fellow- 
men and to all our fellow-beings. And here comes 
in the one principle that ought to guide us in our 
social life. Take one of the commoner and darker 
phases of the violation of this principle, — one that 
I need hardly speak out, and yet would not pass 
by. What has become of the principle, of the man- 
hood, of the honor, of the virtue, of the truth, of the 
sensibility of that man, who, for the sake of his own 
passing pleasure, trenches upon the rights of another 
home, or who is willing to take pleasure at the price 
of the reputation, the standing, the life, of some 
other human* being, — leaving, perhaps, some one 
who might hive been a noble woman, and the centre 
of a noble home, stranded, outcast, scarred, and bro- 
ken, cast over the side of the pathway along which 
human progress travels ? If you will but think of it, 
and analyze the principle that makes a man capable 
of enjoying himself at the cost of others in such a 
way as this, you will see that if it only be carried 
deep enough, and filled full enough with passion, and 
made strong enough, it is simply a realization of our 
deepest and most terrible conceptions of that which 
is most darkly satanic. Devilhood itself means noth- 



Light on the Cloud. 



ing more than this : a seeking for pleasure, a seeking 
to carry out the individual will of the person, for his 
own gratification, without any regard to the price that 
must be paid by the victim of his desires. 

IX. — HEALTH A CONDITION OF HAPPINESS. 

I pass now, after touching upon these principles 
thus, to consider two or three conditions of human 
happiness. How shall we seek to be happy ? The 
first and most common condition, the one that lies at 
the foundation of all, is expressed in the one word 
health. I do not mean simply physical health : I 
mean health of body, health of mind, health of soul ; 
that is, right relationship between the different parts 
of our own being, and between our own being and our 
physical and social surroundings. You can remember 
a time, if you have become too wearied and diseased 
with the cares and burdens of life to feel it to-day, 
and you know some one who stands for a representa- 
tive of it to-day, to whom simple existence is ecstasy. 
Opening the eyes, and letting the light come in, is joy. 
Simply stretching the muscles, and feeling the power 
of the arm, gives a thrill of pleasure. To feel the air 
fan the cheek is a delight. The consciousness of phys- 
ical vigor is a constant joy ; and, where health is, it 
will always be so. When a man feels the touch of the 
east wind as a pang of pain, he may know that the 
time of his perfect health has passed by. If the eye 
is diseased, the falling of the gentle, beautiful light of 



Happiness. 



heaven upon it is a pang of pain. And so I say of 
any faculty, whether physical, mental, or spiritual : the 
simple use of it carries with it a sensation of delight 
if there be health in that faculty; so that the one 
grand condition that lies at the foundation of all the 
pleasure of life is represented by this one word health. 

You take an instrument to-day, string it in perfect 
accord, and place it in the window where the breeze 
will play over its strings ; and, if it is attuned to the 
wind, there will come on the air a dreamy sound of 
lulling music. And so this human nature of ours, this 
physical, mental, and moral life, if it be attuned per- 
fectly to the forces of the world about us, every 
breath of the world's life over us will be music ; so 
that we need not go far to search for joy. Simply 
opening your eyes, simply reaching out your hand, 
simply moving your foot, will be, of itself, happi- 
ness. 

But, through our ignorance or carelessness, the 
most of us have altogether too little practical control 
over the matter of health, — though it is to our shame 
that, by reason of our ignorance and lack of self-con- 
trol, we are not able to command the question as to 
whether we shall be well or not. (The world will some 
time come to it, when it will be able to be well at will.) 

X. — APPRECIATION OF COMMON THINGS. 

But another condition, more within the reach of 
all of us at present, and perhaps more important 



Light on the Cloud. 



even than the one to which I have referred, is the 
appreciation of the common things of the world. The 
most of us have within our reach abundant means for 
constant joy and happiness ; and the reason we are not 
happy is because, overlooking these, we are reaching 
for something that we have not, and crying after 
that. You remember the story of Haman and Mor- 
decai, in the book of Esther : how Haman, the first one 
in all the kingdom, had every human being save the 
king himself at his feet, except one Jew, who sat stiff- 
necked at the king's gate, and would not bow to him 
as he went by. He thought about that so exclusively 
and continually that it entered as a bitter drop into the 
cup of his pleasure, and vitiated every joy. " Of what 
avail," he said, " is it to me that I am the first man in 
the kingdom, that every man bows to me, that my 
word is law to the farthest extreme of the empire, — 
what good is all this to me so long as Mordecai sits 
there, and will not bow as I pass by in the street ? " 
That is an illustration of the readiness with which 
many men throw away abundant sources of pleasure 
just because their will, that they like to make so uni- 
versally regal, is balked in some little particular. 
We are as wise and no wiser than the little babe in 
her mother's arms, who throws away her doll, throws 
away her rattle, throws away all her playthings that 
strew and litter the floor, and, from the window, cries 
for the moon. 

If you will but think of it, the most precious things 
144 



Happiness. 



are the commonest things. The very best gifts that 
it is possible for God to bestow upon humanity, he 
has already bestowed upon every man, woman, and 
child in the world. The most priceless gifts are com- 
mon things that everybody has, — light, air, physical 
existence, mental and moral powers and capabilities, 
the gratification of love, the power to build a home, to 
have a wife by your side, and children about your feet. 
The common things of the world, — how priceless 
they are ! Iron is worth a thousand, a million, times 
more than gold. You might take gold out of the civ- 
ilization of the present time, and that civilization would 
hardly be touched ; but if you took iron out, you 
would make civilization itself an impossibility. Iron, 
that we tread on in the streets, and think nothing 
of, is the minister to all our pleasures ; and yet men, 
for envy of a jewel, a gewgaw, a ring, a gem of some 
kind, simply for adornment, will throw away the vast 
fund of pleasure that comes to them from God's uni- 
versal gifts, trampling them under their feet as swine 
tread pearls in the mire, and then question the wis- 
dom and the love and the bounty of God, because 
he has not given them something which is really 
worth to them very little, after all. 

If you will only look over this world in the light of 
this principle, you will find it true, I think, that God is 
more equable in the distribution of his gifts than you 
imagine. The man who has the largest pile of wealth 
is able only to get out of it his board and clothes. 

MS 



Light on the Cloud, 



He may board in a finer house, and have a little better 
quality of clothes ; but it is an infinitesimal part of the 
largest fortune that any man can use. So he who has 
what he can use is just as rich as the man who has so 
much that he is burdened everlastingly with the care 
of it. 

I do not wish to press this principle too far, only to 
emphasize again this one idea that the central things, 
the most precious things, those things on which 
human happiness depend, are universal things. Take 
it at your dinner, say : what are the things which 
you could best spare, and what are the things that you 
would think no dinner could be complete without ? 
They are the things which you give to the prisoner as 
his prison fare. They are the very centre and founda- 
tion of your physical life, the things that no man can 
do without, — bread and water, the two universal ele- 
ments of life. You can spare all the side-dishes ; 
you can spare every thing else : you cannot spare 
these ; and the poorest, if he have any thing, has 
these. 

XL — NOBLE HAPPINESS IN NOBLE THINGS. 

If you wish to gain a happiness that is perma- 
nent, a happiness that will grow as your being grows, 
you must constantly seek to cultivate the higher and 
nobler side of your being. Cultivate those things 
that are permanent ; build yourself up in those things 
that are divine. Bodily pleasures are transient in 
145 



Happiness, 

their very nature. Take any one of the nerves of 
the body, and confine the sensations of pleasure to 
that one nerve, that is. play on that one string day 
after day. and in a very little time the sensation of 
pleasure turns to a sensation of pain, and pain becomes 
disease,, and disease destruction of the very source of 
pleasure. If you take a violin, and play for a month 
on one string, you not only do not make line music, 
but you wear that string out. so that there is no 
music left in it at all : thus if you play on any one 
string of this marvellously attuned instrument of the 
body, of the mind, and of the soul, that makes up the 
man. you will find that you are destroying the very 
capability of pleasure. This is what the sensual man 
does ; this is what the man does who makes the pur- 
suit of money the only thing in life out of which he 
can get any pleasure : this is what the man does who 
makes himself a bookworm, and buries himself in his 
books, or who makes ambition the one object of his 
life. In other words, a man should have more than 
one string to his instrument, and should play various 
tunes, if he would have melody and harmony in his 
life. 

Enjoy to the full the sweets of this present life that 
God has given you. There is no harm in it : there is 
good in it, if you keep inside the laws of right, the 
laws that govern your relations to your fellow-men. 
Train yourselves mentally, because you are capable of 
thought. Did it ever occur to vou that the word man 
147 



Light on the Cloud, 



is derived from a root that means to think ? Man is 
a thinker ; and no being has any right to call himself a 
man, who does not cultivate his power of thought, 
broaden himself out, search for truth, look for the 
higher and nobler things of life. 

XII.— THE NOBLE THINGS ENDURE. 

Then the permanent things of life, that fill up the 
measure of our satisfaction, and reach out into the 
future, are those that link us to the qualities that are 
indeed divine. Love, goodness, truth, righteousness 
— these are the springs of inexhaustible joy. And the 
obligation comes in just here. May, translated, 
becomes ought; that Is, a man ought to be all he- 
can. If a horse is capable of grand speed, of doing 
the highest and finest work that is possible to the 
horse, if that horse could be consciously contented with 
doing something less, something poorer, dragging a 
cart, and simply working in the drudgery of the world, 
he would have fallen below that which he was capable 
of, and might be morally condemned as having become 
less than he was strong enough to become ; but what 
shall we say of a man who, being crowned with the 
possibilities of an intellectual and spiritual life that 
link him with the highest beings of the universe, and 
with God, is contented to live on the plane of the 
animal ; living entirely here, finding his satisfactions 
here, caring for nothing grander and better ? He not 
only comes under condemnation as having done 
148 



Happiness, 



wrong, but he loses higher, broader, grander sources 
of joy; because, as you go up to God. you are not 
climbing a pyramid, broad and grand at the base, but 
coming to a point at the top : you are following one 
single ray of light until it broadens and widens, and 
the whole heaven is aglow, and you come to the very 
source of light itself. So as you travel from humanity 
toward God, toward heaven, your pathway broadens 
and brightens, just according to those beautiful words 
of the Bible : " The path of the just is as the shining 
light that shineth more and more unto the perfect 
day." 

149 



GOD MADE OUR LIVES TO BE A SONG. 

C^OD made our lives to be a song 
3 Sweet as the music of the spheres 
That still their harmonies prolong 
For him who rightly hears. 

The heavens and the earth do play 

Upon us, if we be in tune : 
Winter shouts hoarse his roundelay, 

And tender sweet pipes June. 

But oftentimes the songs are pain, 
And discord mars our harmonies : 

Our strings are snapped by selfish strain, 
And harsh hands break our keys. 

But God meant music ; and we may, 
If we will keep our lives in tune, 

Hear the whole year sing roundelay, 
December answering June. 



God made our Lives to be a Song. 

God ever at his keyboard plays, 

Harmonics, right, and discords, wrong ; 
: He that hath ears," and who obeys, 
May hear the mystic song. 
151 



HOPE. 

HERE, standing by the sleeper's side, 
Pale face, closed eyes, and restful feet, 
Cold hands in nerveless clasp that meet, 
Can I think aught but that, He diedt 

And when the grassy mound is piled, 
Must I bend o'er the flowers above, . 
And say, " The one I loved and love, 

My husband, father, brother, child, — 

" The hands I held, the lips I kissed, 
These are but dust and ashes now, 
Changing to shrub or flower, and know 
The friend will be forever missed " ? 

Nay, let the dust go back to dust : 
Nature will have her own ; but yet 
The body payeth Nature's debt ; 

And room is left for grandest trust. 



Hope. 

As, in the sacred memory 

Of days of old, the angel stood 
Beside the orphaned brotherhood, 

And startled them with his strange cry, — 

" He is not here : he's risen ! " so now 
Hope stands, bright-winged, above the sod, 
Pointing up to the house of God, — 

Bidding us not to look below. 

Not in the past, not in the ground, 
Do those we call the lost abide : 
Some day we'll see them at our side, 

The lost no more, but then the found. 

Thus whispers Hope ; and we believe 

Her whisper is an echo sent 

From God o'er heaven's bright battlement : 
And that God never would deceive. 



PART SEVENTH. 



HEAVEN. 
I. —WHERE IS HEAVEN? 

NOT as a mere matter of curiosity do I propose to 
lead you along the pathway of human specula- 
tion on this question. Perhaps it were worth while to 
do it even for no higher purpose. But as to the man, 
the thoughts of his childhood, and the line of his 
growth, are instructive and encouraging, so, to the 
Christian manhood of the world, its childish thoughts, 
and methods of youthful progress, are full of meaning, 
and of food for hope. 

The belief of mankind, that a soul survives the body, 
maybe regarded as an inherent and universal instinct; 
for there is no well-founded account of an exception to 
this belief anywhere on record. Some of the rudest 
barbarous tribes seem to have attained no conception 
of any special abode for these souls, but imagined 
that they staid around the places of their old resi- 
dence, or of their burial. The next step beyond this 
perhaps may find illustration in the beliefs of our 
154 



Heaven. 

North American Indians. Their imaginations took 
different forms in different tribes. I give one as a 
sample. They "believe that beyond the most distant 
mountains of their country there is a wide river; 
beyond that river, a great country; on the other side 
of that country, a world of water ; in that water are a 
thousand islands, full of trees and streams of water, 
and that a thousand buffaloes and ten thousand deer 
graze on the hills, or ruminate in the valleys;" 1 and 
he thinks, — 

" Admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company." 

And Hiawatha, leaving his people for " the land of the 
hereafter," sails in his birch canoe westward over the 
northern lake, following the purple track of the setting 
sun, and disappearing in the golden mists of the dis- 
tance. 

About on a level with this were the early Grecian 
and Oriental dreams. The garden of the Hesperides, 
with its dragon-guarded golden apples, in the far West ; 
the celestial cities of Meru, with towers that touched 
the sky ; the banquet-halls of Ethiopia, mirage-like in 
the desert; the spicy Islands of Immortality, musical 
and enchanting in mid-ocean ; the happy country of 
the Hyperboreans, nestling amid the summits of 
Northern Caucasus, — these are some of their fancies. 
Others were of Elysian Fields in Hades, or of 

1 Dick's " Future State," p. 20. 



Light on the Cloud. 



Islands of the Blest, away somewhere near the 
borders of the world. 

These may suffice for hints of Old World thoughts 
and hopes. We must now confine ourselves to the 
line of Hebrew and Christian speculation. 

Wherever the Scriptures were known, the cherished 
traditions of the Garden of Eden were preserved. 
And as the evil of the world all centred in the loss of 
that, so naturally, hopes of recovery would take on 
the form of getting back to Eden once more. There- 
fore speculation strove to settle the location of the 
Garden, and to fix there man's hopes of the future. 
Sometimes it was located deep in the recesses of 
India; again, in the beautiful valleys of Georgia, 
rose-decked and spice-perfumed; and then in some 
unexplored region of Mesopotamia. The fainting 
traveller in the desert would imagine he caught 
glimpses of its playing fountains and waving palms. 
Or, it was in the centre of the torrid zone ; the hot 
flaming, fiery sword guarding it, on every hand, 
against mortal approach. In a Latin work of the 
twelfth century, it is said, " Paradise is the extreme 
eastern part of Asia, and is made inaccessible by a 
wall of fire surrounding it, and rising unto heaven." 
Since then the Canaries have been thought to be 
Elysian, and so were named " The Fortunate Isles." 
And among the motives that animated Columbus in 
his voyages, no small place should be assigned to his 
hope of finding the seat of the primeval paradise ; and 
156 



Heaven. 



all readers of history know with what intense eager- 
ness the Spanish explorers searched the mysterious 
depths of this Western world, in hopes of somewhere 
coming upon the long-sought terrestrial paradise ; 
and the old Spanish hidalgo hoped to cast off his 
years again when, somewhere in Florida, he should 
discover and bathe in the fountain of perpetual youth. 

But, as geography has advanced, these mirages 
have fled ; and as the common light of day shone in, 
the dreams have dissolved and faded. Not on the 
surface of the earth is it to be found. 

The ancient Jews conceived of Sheol as beneath the 
earth ; and, in early Christian times, they located 
paradise in one part of this underground world. Even 
Dante, so late as the year 1300, teaches a similar doc- 
trine. Science has made it forever impossible that 
these opinions should prevail again. 

A widespread belief of Christendom has been, that 
this world, purged and renovated by fire, is to be the 
future heaven of the race. There are some pleasant 
things about this conception, that commend it at first 
to the popular mind. But almost its only basis is cer- 
tain passages of Scripture about " new heavens and 
new earth ; " and as these doubtless refer to moral and 
spiritual renovation, rather than physical, their sup- 
port fails. It necessitates material bodies also in the 
future life, or rather presupposes them ; and, further, 
since there is no proof, but much the other way, in 
favor of this world's coming to an end, for untold ages 
157 



Light on the Cloud. 



yet, it appears extremely improbable that Seth and 
Abraham and Moses and Paul have yet to wait for 
millions of years before they can get their bodies, and 
enter their final rest. 

I can only touch briefly on other forms of belief, 
before coming to the one I am most inclined to adopt. 
Some have placed heaven in the moon. Books have 
been written to prove it in the sun. Others locate it 
on Alcyone, the central sun of our firmament, the 
milky way ; and by a still grander flight of imagination, 
and with more of reason, if it is to have any one great 
orb to itself, still others fix A in the grand central sun 
of the universe, around which revolve and shine all 
other suns and systems, galaxies and firmaments. That 
there is such a central light, science seems to indicate, 
and men are coming to believe ; and, were I to choose 
among the various material locations that have been 
fixed upon, I should unhesitatingly select this as the 
grandest and most reasonable. But there is one other 
theory, grander and more worthy still. 

It will be apparent to you by this time, from the 
various and conflicting beliefs of Christendom, that the 
Bible does not answer the question as to the location 
of heaven. But as, when your friend goes to Europe, 
you cannot help giving the place to which he has 
gone some kind of picture and outline in your mind, 
so the history of human thinking proves that men 
must and will give some " local habitation " to their 
future hopes. And the best we can do is this : by 



Heaven. 

the light of Scripture, of science, and our own natures, 
we may think the noblest and most reasonable thing 
we can; and we may be sure that, whether our 
notion is right or wrong, the reality will not disap- 
point us. We cannot fancy any thing that will equal 
the fact; and so I do not here offer my dictum as 
necessarily true : I only give it as the best I can now 
think. If any of you can think a better, keep it. All 
our mistakes will be corrected by and by. 

II. — MOST REASONABLE THOUGHT OF HEAVEN. 

What, then, is the situation ? It was natural enough 
that the ancients should locate heaven as they did, 
having their extremely limited knowledge of the uni- 
verse. They thought this earth was all, and its dura- 
tion brief : so they had only to provide for its compar- 
atively few inhabitants. Now, we know that this world 
is only one little grain of sand on a limitless beach of 
worlds, on which the ocean of infinity breaks. As for 
its duration, there is not the least particle of reason 
for supposing that the universe, in some form or other, 
shall ever cease to be ; and the number of God's chil- 
dren for whom a heavenly place is prepared, who shall 
count them ? Not only the innumerable millions of 
earth. There is every reason to suppose that the num- 
ber of inhabited worlds is as great as the number of 
sand-grains of this ; and these shall cease being the 
birthplaces, cradles, and training-schools of intelligent 
creatures, who can tell when ? In the light of these 
159 



Light on the Cloud. 



considerations, it seems to me extremely unreasonable 
to suppose that all these are to be confined, for a 
home, to any one orb of however magnificent propor- 
tions. God may make some peculiar manifestations 
of himself at the centre, and so it may be the temple 
of the universe. 

There are animals in existence as much smaller 
than man as he is smaller than the whole universe ; 
and the ultimate particles that compose the human 
frame are as far apart, according to their size, as the 
suns and stars of the astronomic system ; and the 
universe may look to God as much like one compact 
and connected mechanism as does a brick or brown- 
stone dwelling to us. I incline to adopt the belief, 
then, that the universe is God's " house," and that 
the worlds and interstellar spaces are its " many man- 
sions," or rooms. It seems to me the most magnifi- 
cent conception of immortality that I have ever met. 
I will only attempt to indicate one or two points in its 
support. Nothing in the Bible or in reason, that I 
know of, necessitates its rejection. 

III. — THIS IDEA GIVES ROOM. 

It gives room and range as no other theory does. 
Science cannot outgrow it, as it has so many others. 
It makes place for the countless children of God on 
countless other worlds. 

1 60 



Heaven. 

IV. — ANALOGY SUPPORTS IT. 

A strong argument may be drawn from analogy. 
The whole world is packed full of life. A drop of 
water is a little world in itself : it is all alive with 
thousands of creatures. Every summer leaf is thickly 
inhabited. Xot a point on the globe, large enough to 
place the end of your finger, but may be all crowded 
and moving with creatures as wondrous in structure 
as man. It is contrary to what we know of God's 
ways, then, to suppose immense abysses empty 
between all his worlds. It is no argument against 
this theory, that the telescope does not discover it ; 
for the natural eye is made to see natural things, and 
is no more fitted to see the spiritual than are the 
nerves of touch to hear music. Another earth might 
be only ten miles away, and, if the light did not break 
against it, it would not be visible ; and we have no 
reason to suppose that solar radiation has any relation 
to spiritual existence ; and, if any one supposes that 
the starry movements would at all interfere with such 
a world, it may be remembered that the movements of 
light cross and recross and mingle at ten thousand 
different angles without any disorder. And also, 
there is no reason why spirits should be conscious of 
such motions any more than to-day we feel the swing, 
sweep, and roll of the earth through space. 



Light on the Cloud. 



V. — THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE STILL OURS. 

It does not seem reasonable that we are never to see, 
or study, or have to do any more with this marvellous 
handiwork of God's wisdom and power, as displayed 
in this material cosmos. We live here a few fleeting 
years, study a little, and wonder at God's work, and 
then die, knowing not much more of the mysteries of 
earth than a child knows of his cradle. It can not be 
that our knowledge is to stop here. No ; but from 
world to world, from system to system, why may we 
not journey, searching, admiring, adoring the won- 
drous Maker and our Father at every step ? From 
one room to another in the Father's house we will go, 
as one who wanders, awed and delighted, from part to 
part of a glorious cathedral. 

We may believe, then, that heaven is made up of the 
innumerable interstellar rooms that compose the great 
house of the universe. 

I have had, from its very nature, to give consider- 
able space to the answering of this first question, as 
to the location of heaven. Those that remain are 
more important, and yet I must compress them into 
smaller compass. It is hard in one essay to outline a 
subject that is large enough for a book. 

VI.— WHAT IS HEAVEN? 

It is not my present purpose to attempt a descrip- 
tion of its life or employments. At another time it 

162 



Heaven, 



might not be unprofitable to do this, but not now. 
What I propose is to unfold the inner and essential 
principles of heaven. What are the main character- 
istics of the heavenly existence, that make it heavenly ? 
This I shall try to show. 

VII. — HEAVEN IS HARMONY. 

The first element of heaven is harmony. That 
which marks the difference between noise and music 
is that the first is disorder, and the latter is harmony. 
A discord carried far enough destroys the music, and 
turns it into noise. The difference between chaos 
and creation is that one is disorder, and the other har- 
mony again. Break in upon the grand anthem of 
the stellar movements, and chaos would come again. 
The difference between health and disease is, once 
more, just the difference between harmony and dis- 
order. Some disturbing element in the eye, and pain 
comes, and then blindness ; some disturbing element 
in the blood, and sickness comes, and then, at last, 
death, or the utter dissolution of the harmony of 
the body. The only difference between happiness 
and sorrow, again, is only that between harmony and 
disorder. What do you mean by being surrounded 
by pleasant circumstances ? Why, this : that you are 
agreeably related to, in harmony with, your surround- 
ings. What your eye sees, suits you. What your 
ear hears, suits you. What of odors and fragrance 
you smell, suits you. What your hands handle, suits 

163 



Light on the Cloud, 



you. What your feet fall upon, suits you. That is, 
you. are in harmony with your material conditions. 
And, as for your social life, the interplay back and 
forth between you and it is like a piece of perfect 
mechanism ; you are in harmony with society. Let all 
these conditions exist, and you would be perfectly 
happy. But, instead of its working like perfect 
machinery, it breaks and grates and jars continually. 
Eye is not satisfied, nor ear, nor hand. Plans get 
broken ; families get broken ; social ties get broken. 
And then sin comes into all our lives, and breaks up 
all harmony of relationship between us and God. 

This, then, harmony, is the first and fundamental 
principle of heaven. In harmony with God, delight- 
ing and rejoicing ever in him as your Father ; in har- 
mony with all its inhabitants, loving each as yourself, 
and catching new light from every radiant face ; in 
harmony with the externals of heaven, every sense a 
luxury and every moment a joy, — these things shall 
compose the concordant music that shall make all the 
rooms of the Father's house re-echo with the everlast- 
ing joy. 

VIII. — HEAVEN IS SATISFACTION. 

Another essential element of heaven will be the 
satisfaction of every desire. Some of the most pain- 
ful experiences of this life are its unsatisfied longings. 
What of physical suffering, to one who has felt it, 
means more than hunger ? and the aflectional and 
164 



Heaven. 

moral and intellectual tragedies of life are only the 
histories of its unfed hungers. The hungers of the 
brain for truths, the hunger of the heart for love, 
the hunger of the soul for life ; the hunger for power, 
for fame, for pleasure, — these are written all over the 
face of the earth in fire and tears and blood. How 
does some desolate, lonely life look back to where 
some clasped companion hand was wrenched away, 
and from which hour it has wandered unsatisfied ! 
How does some husband or wife hunger for the 
unfound ideal that a drunken or faithless mate fails 
to give them ! How do some mother's arms ache 
with their hunger for the little one gone ! 

Does it not mean heaven, then, to look up and say, 
" There I shall be satisfied " ? You will not carry all 
your present wants with you ; but every want you do 
carry will find its answer. And, since we do not now 
know particularly what all those desires will be, it is 
proper enough for us to think of heaven as a place 
where all our present right desires will be satisfied. 
So if you say to me, " I want this or that in heaven : 
shall I have it ? " I answer unhesitatingly, " Yes." And 
I say so on this principle : My little boy teases me 
for something which he wishes me to get him next 
year. I say, " You may have it ; " and yet I may know 
that, by the time next year has come, he will not want 
it. I do not falsify : I only accommodate myself to 
his capacity, and, in a specific instead of a general 
way, promise him that his desires shall be satisfied. 

i6 S 



Light on the Cloud. 



It is for lack of a little thought in this direction 
that people have so woefully misunderstood Miss 
Phelps's little book, " Gates Ajar." Its underlying 
idea is just common-sense itself. The lady promises 
the little girl, aching with an unsatisfied musical hun- 
ger, and longing to have and play the piano, that she 
shall have one in heaven. Hungering for cookies, of 
which her poverty deprives her, she is promised all 
she wants of them in heaven. And it is simple, 
common sense. What does she mean ? Only this : 
that her desire for music and her hunger for food 
should be satisfied. The Bible promises that ; and 
reason teaches that happiness could not exist with- 
out it. And, as for the materialism of it, a piano 
is no more material than a harp, and cookies are just 
as spiritual as growing apples. And the Apocalypse 
is full of these not only, but of a hundred other 
figures quite as sensuous. Satisfaction, then, is the 
next element of heaven. 

IX. — HEAVEN IS EXPANSION. 

The life there shall be an expansion. Paul com- 
pares the resurrection life to growing grain. At first 
it is only a single green blade ; then it expands and 
unfolds ; it becomes two, then many ; it grows, and 
lifts up; it waves long plumes in the summer air; it 
buds ; it blossoms ; it forms young kernels ; then fills 
out its full and heavy head. The process of its whole 
life is one of expansion. So shall be the eternal life. 

166 



Heaven. 

Just this is the order of earthly, human life. The 
new-born babe is a bundle of faculties and powers as 
yet unrolled. It learns the use of hand and eye and 
ear ; then the mind wakes up, one faculty at a time, 
curiosity, search, taste, imagination, arrangement, 
memory, until he expands into merchant, artist, states- 
man, orator. But every man feels that he has wings 
in him not yet unfolded, that he has a thousand capa- 
bilities not yet explored. The air of heaven shall 
open them as a June day unfolds a flower. 

We may have in heaven, — and parables like that of 
the talents strongly indicate it, — the gradual develop- 
ment of whole sets of faculties as yet unimagined. 
Foetal life could never dream out this earth-life. The 
caterpillar could never imagine himself a butterfly. 

We may have more than five senses there. Why 
not fifty ? God will give us keys to every room in his 
house. We have no reason to assume that there are 
only five, because we have as yet the use of only five. 
We know now there are lights we cannot see, and 
heats we cannot feel, and sounds we cannot hear. 
Why not other things that are neither of these, and 
the nature of which is at present unknown ? 

Heavenly life will be expansive life. Each new 
day — or what stands for days in heaven — shall find 
us more and greater than we were; and so on forever. 
167 



Light on the Cloud. 



X. — HEAVEN IS PROGRESS. 

And lastly, on this point, the heaven- life will be one 
of progress. 

God has made it one of the essential characteristics 
of man, that he should always press on to seek what 
lies beyond. This is the secret of scientific advance.. 
The universe is like a house with all its rooms locked. 
Man works till he opens one door ; and, after gazing 
for a little at the new wonders, he attacks another lock, 
and pushes back its wards ; and so from room he 
presses on to room. Through years of toil, by sea and 
land, he has worked, to open up to light the surface of 
the earth ; and still to-day the workers toil. Livingstone 
plunges into Central Africa, after the Nile fountain 
and other secrets ; and ship after ship still knocks for 
admission at the icy gates of the Polar Sea. All are 
impelled by the desire to know. A hundred earth- 
born sciences illustrate the same truth ; and beyond 
earth, through ages of labor, mankind has pushed out 
his adventurous voyages of discovery among the stars. 
And this work has just begun. This search for what 
is beyond, I say, is a characteristic of the race. 
Nothing more to discover, to conquer, to do, is only 
to say that misery has come down on human life. 
From the restless, idle boy, to retired merchants, old 
men beyond their work, and Alexanders with no more 
worlds to conquer, stagnation is misery and sorrow. 
And there is nothing in death to change all this. 

168 



Heaven. 

Once imagine heaven to have nothing more to learn or 
to do, and the cup of eternal life would have reached 
its bitter dregs, instead of proving an exhaustless 
fountain. The songs would die down, the harps grow 
silent, and all creatures long for an oblivious sleep. 

And so just this eternal progress that the soul 
demands finds its reason in the fact that God is 
infinite and unsearchable, and we are his finite children. 
Just as one might climb a mountain, and get no nearer 
the moon ; or sail the sea forever, with his eye upon, 
but never overtaking, a star, — so we will climb up 
ever into new heights of the beauty and glory and love 
of God, but never find the end. 

O, the life of heaven ! We think it strange that it 
is covered with mystery ; but well has God thus 
covered it. Did it lie open to us, we should be sick 
with longing, and so unfit for our work and discipline. 
Could the world catch its music, and see its glories, 
we should wish for the knife or the poison that even 
with violence should open for us a way through the 
closed doors of our fleshly tabernacles. 

11 We speak of the realms of the blest, 
That country so bright and so fair, 
And oft are its glories confest ; 
But what must it be to be there ? ' ' 

XL — TERMS OF ADMISSION. 

It only remains for me now to indicate the terms of 
admission. We all wish to enter heaven ; and God 

i6g 



Light on the Cloud. 



grant we may ! But how ? " Tell me the way to this 
blessed country, for I fain would become a pilgrim 
thither," I hear you say. " Who shall ascend into the 
hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy 
place ? " Listen to the answer. " He that hath clean 
hands and a pure heart." You have the answer ; but 
let me unfold it a little, and put it into other language. 
The whole secret is just here. In order to enter, 
you must have ability to see heaven, to hear it, 
and to feel it. Man's happiness comes not from where 
he is, what he has, nor what surrounds him ; but from 
his capacity to use and appropriate to his own enjoy- 
ment. Two men may take a walk together : one 
knows botany, geology, mineralogy, chemistry, natural 
history, etc. ; the other, none of them. The latter finds 
his walk exceedingly dull, and he does not see any 
thing to amuse or instruct; but every flower, every 
stone, the insects in the air, and the squirrel in the 
wall, speak to the other, and fill him with wonder and 
delight at the wondrous works of God. Now, in the 
external sense of having, one man has just as much as 
the other ; but one is capable of appreciating it all, and 
the other none. Take a blind man up the monument 
on Bunker Hill : talk of the city at his feet, and of the 
western hills glorious with sunset ; point out the river 
sweeping peacefully by, the harbor beyond, and the 
ocean that bounds it ; then talk of sister cities set 
round like precious stones about a central gem ; but 
he is blind, and you only mock and torture him with 
i 7 o 



Heaven. 

delights he knows of, but cannot share. Invite a 
deaf friend to go and hear Albani with you : let him 
see her come upon the stage, and from her parted 
lips pour out the invisible melody of song : it is tor- 
ment to him. The music is all around him. O, if 
only for one moment he could hear ! And so the key 
to heaven is the ability to enjoy it. Unless you have in 
you the awakening and culture of your spiritual facul- 
ties, you may be under the very shadow of the throne, 
and never know it ; its music may roll all about you, 
and you never know it ; its airs may fan your 
cheeks, and you never know it ; its celestial scenery 
may stretch out, — fair vales, and mighty hills, and 
gentle streams, and fadeless trees, — and you never 
know it. As one might sleep in the central bower of a 
garden, all the beauties and sweets clos^ around him, 
and yet he be suffering in awful dreams, and tortured 
with a thousand terrors, you may be the central one 
in the throng of the blest ; and yet, unless in your own 
soul you are spiritually alive, it may be to you only the 
lowest abyss of hell. Fitness for heaven, then, is the 
key to it. 

171 



PROGRESS. 

THEY'LL not stand still in that summer land : 
The baby whose tiny feet 
Went climbing the ladder where angels stand 
A baby no more you'll greet. 

A strong young man, or a maiden fair, 

In the Father's bouse to-day 
Is the little one of the sunny hair, 

That prattled about your way. 

O, tell me, then, is the baby lost ?. 

Would you have the baby face 
Forever smooth, with no thought-lines crost, 

For the sake of the baby grace ? 

My darling is too dear to me 

To wish it so much of ill : 
Let the loved one grow in eternity, 

But stay my darling still. 



Progress. 

However great the blest may grow, 

However they out-tower 
The thought and the life we lead below, 

There never will come an hour 

When they will forget us ; for grandest souls 

Are grandest still in this : 
As the endless scroll of heaven unrolls 

Its mystery of bliss, — 

They do not lose their thought of those 

They loved in days gone by ; 
For the spirit, the nearer God it grows, 

Loves thee more tenderly. 

The higher in heaven my loved ones rise, 

The lower still they bend ; 
And ages of progress in the skies 

Hold for me still my friend. 

J 73 



A. R. C. 

WHEN falls the night upon the earth, 
And all in shadow lies, 
The sun's not dead : his radiance still 
Beams bright on other skies. 

And when the morning star fades out, 

On the pale brow of dawn, 
Though lost a while to earthly eyes, 

It still keeps shining on. 

Some other world is glad to see 

Our star that's gone away : 
The light whose going makes our night 

Makes somewhere else a day. 

The feet that cease their walking here, 

Grown weary of earth's road, 
With tireless strength go travelling 

The pathway up to God. 



A. JR. C. 

The hands whose patient lingers now 

Have laid earth's labors by, 
With loving skill have taken up 

Some higher ministry. • 

The eyes that give no longer back 

The tender look of love, 
Now, with a deathless gleam, drink in 

God's beauteous world above. 

The lips whose sweet tones made us ask 

If angels sweeter sung, 
Though silent here, make heaven sflad 

With their melodious tongue. 

And. though her body lies asleep, 

Our favorite is not dead : 
She rises from dark death's bright birth 

"With joy upon her head.'* 

And she is just our loved one still, 

And loves us now no less : 
She goes away to come again, — 

To watch us, and to bless. 

And though we cannot clasp her hand, 

Nor look upon her face. 
Nor listen to her voice again. 

Nor watch her ways of s;race, — 



Light on the Cloud. 



Still we can keep her memory bright, 
And walk the way she trod, 

And know she waits until we come 
Up to the house of God. 

Let us be thankful, through our tears, 
That she was ours so long, 

And try to lift our tones of grief 
T' accord with her heaven song. 
176 



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